


just call me inspiration

by hereforlou



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Art Student Harry Styles, Coffee Shops, M/M, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Writer Louis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-06-16 07:43:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 51,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15432270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereforlou/pseuds/hereforlou
Summary: The truth is Louis knows he’s going to hell, if there is such a thing, but it isn’t because he writes erotic fiction for a living. If anything, it’s because his muse, the reason he’s inspired to write about people shagging in increasingly creative ways everyday, is the sweetest, loveliest, most genuine (and completely oblivious) future children-book illustrator in the world.(Or, the one where Louis is a writer, Harry is an art student, and they inspire each other in very different ways.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I’ve been chipping away at this fic on and off for months and I’m tired of looking at it, so I’m posting it as a wip. I’ll update once a week and hopefully finish it before I run out of chapters to post. I'm about 80% done :)
> 
> Title is from Stevie Nicks’ _Inspiration_. 
> 
> Thank you [E](https://archiveofourown.org/users/polka_stripes/pseuds/polka_stripes), [Chloe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelarry10/pseuds/lovelarry10) and Lizzie (I can't find your blog anymore? :( ) for being great and for all your help! 
> 
> Here’s a [Tumblr](https://hereforlou.tumblr.com/post/176279010756/just-call-me-inspiration-ongoing-the-truth-is) post.

“How many times you reckon I can use ‘cock’ in the same paragraph before it stops looking like a real word?” Louis asks as soon as Liam answers his phone, and rolls his eyes up to the ceiling when Liam splutters in his ear. Liam should be used to it by now, Louis thinks, discussing the frequency with which cocks are mentioned in a piece of writing is part of their job after all.

To his credit, Liam recovers quickly enough, clearing his throat and considering Louis’ question with all the seriousness it deserves.

“Well,” he says after a moment, “there are other options. You could try a synonym.”

“None of them sound as good as cock, though.” Louis has this predicament at least once a week, but he usually gets over it without needing to talk to his editor. In fact, he usually dodges his editor’s calls and ignores his emails until Liam is forced to come see him in person. These are clearly desperate times.

He’s been stuck on the same paragraph since last night, the same fucking scene (ha) he’s been working on for a week: the magical, earth-shattering lay that solves everyone’s problems and gives a nice, happy and satisfying close to his story.

His bloody impossible story. A story that apparently does not want to get written at all.

“You could focus on other body parts?” Liam offers.

“Cocks are quite essential where I’m at, Liam. The plot would not move along nicely without mentioning cocks at this point. Especially because there’s two of them. Both cocks need to be ‘spent’ and ‘flushed’ and ‘softening between their thighs’ for me to be able to sleep tonight.” Louis actually makes quotation marks with his fingers. He’s bordering on hysterical. He hasn’t even gone through the first round of rewrites yet and it’s possible he will snap before that time comes.

“I see what you mean about the overuse of...the word.” Liam’s laugh is awkward and Louis can just picture him, going pink and looking down at his lap as he speaks. The strange thing is that Liam is ruthless on paper. His notes on Louis’ drafts are filthy, endless scribbles in red pen going from:

_People use contractions when they speak use them!!!_

to:

_How can one (1) man come that much that many times in what I assume was less than two hours and NOT die? Doesn’t he run out of sperm? Is he a magical creature of some sort?? (story idea?? supernatural creature sex = bestiality?? check!)_

There are many, many things Liam still doesn’t understand about erotic fiction and one of those things is that people do not care about basic biology when reading porn. Well, they don’t care about _accurate_ basic biology. Louis has to admit that basic biology is a big part of most of his writing published as Austin Williams.

“Every other word just sounds so silly,” he whines into the phone.

“Even dick?”

“I mean,” Louis considers, “I suppose dick’s alright, but I’ve been using cock throughout. It’d look weird to start calling it that now. You’re either a cock person or a dick person.”

“You are?”

“Yes, Liam. Shit, I bet you call ‘em willies, don’t you?”

“I...guess I use dick. Or prick.”

“Prick wouldn’t sound right in this context,” Louis argues. Cock is the way to go, Louis knows it, he’s just overthinking everything because he’s tired of working on something that should have been finished weeks ago. “Why does there have to be _two_ of them?”

“That’s what happens when you write gay erotica, I guess.” Ugh, Louis hates it when Liam calls it _erotica_. It makes Louis think of cheap paperbacks with titles like _My Night with the Innkeeper_ or _Penelope’s Affair_. Technically, Louis’ (or rather, Austin’s) books fall in the same category, but he doesn’t need to be reminded. “You could always bring Lorenzo back.”

“God, no, I hate Lorenzo. Now _that’s_ a prick.” Lorenzo is his go-to hunk when Austin Williams starts running dry and he needs to bring Catherine Darling out. Now, Catherine has actually written a book called _Penelope’s Affair_. It has four and a half stars on Goodreads. Most of Austin’s books hold a solid three, and Louis always puts so much more effort into those, has so much more hands on experience to draw out of. He just doesn’t get what the big deal is about Lorenzo. The bloke doesn’t even speak proper Italian, Louis has never bothered with it. He likes that it gives Lorenzo less credibility.

“You know they’ve been asking me for this draft for weeks,” Liam says, a sterner note creeping into his tone. “Just finish the scene and you can fix it later. Work on something else while I edit.”

“It’s not that easy,” Louis groans back. “I’m calling you, doesn’t that tell you just how not easy this is shaping up to be? And it’s not even a Hunter!”

Maybe that’s the problem. Louis never, ever has trouble writing Hunter. Hunter’s had all-male threesomes and foursomes and Louis never thought he was overusing the word ‘cock’ when writing those scenes. But Hunter is Austin’s signature character. He has his own series of books, and Louis puts a lot more work into his stories than he does to anything else. What he’s stuck on now is nothing, a short story meant to be part of an anthology that he doesn’t even care about.

So why he’s so torn over this stupid scene is beyond him.

“Maybe you should, you know,” Liam begins to say. He trails off, clearly assuming Louis is able to read his mind. He always does this, starts to speak and leaves sentences unfinished as if what he means should be obvious. Louis always forgets how unnerving it is until he’s in the middle of a conversation with him and he wishes he could reach through the phone and slap Liam a little.

“I should what?” Louis asks, exasperated when the seconds stretch too long.

“Should...find some inspiration.”

Louis blinks at his computer screen. The cursor on his word document blinks back at him.  

“And how do you suppose I do that?”

“Well, you’d know! You’re the one always going on about finding inspiration and then turning in thirty pages of smut in a single weekend! Call your boyfriend or whatever and...inspire yourself.”

Louis throws his head back and laughs, not only because what Liam is saying is absolute nonsense, but because he sounds so horrified to be saying it that Louis can actually _feel_ how uncomfortable he is.

“You think I’m shagging my way through work, don’t you?” he asks when he recovers, still giggling into the back of his hand. “Think I’m having that good a time?”

“Well.” Liam clears his throat. “Well, aren’t you? You always mention a he, I know I haven’t made that up.”

“And how do you know he’s someone I’m shagging? Or even a person for that matter.”

“He’s inspiring you to write about shagging, so I should hope he’s not your dog or something!” Liam nearly shouts and Louis laughs again, clutching his belly and nearly toppling his chair over.

“I’m not shagging him,” Louis finally says before Liam gets too huffy and starts demanding things of him again. “He’s a friend. We talk.”

“About sex?”

“No.” Definitely not. “Is everything about sex with you?”

“You called me about using the word cock too much. In a sex scene. In a pornographic story you’re supposed to be writing.”

“Your point?”

“I want that draft by Friday or we’re giving your spot to someone else,” Liam tells him, finally fed up. “Go talk with your muse or whatever.”

“Don’t be angry, I’m suffering here!”

“Goodbye, _Austin_ ,” Liam says and hangs up. He’s serious then, if he’s calling Louis _Austin_. Louis hates his pen name. Catherine Darling isn’t that much better, but he uses it so rarely it doesn’t really register. Also, Liam never calls him _Catherine_ quite in that tone.

The only pen name that counts, the only one Louis has ever really wanted to be associated with, is the original one, L. W. Tomlinson. Tomlinson wrote one novel, poured heart and soul in it, and then he vanished from the face of the earth, never to be heard from again.

These days he almost feels made up, even more so than Austin and Catherine sometimes.

Louis drops his phone on his desk with a clatter and rubs his hands over his face. It’s painful just how much he doesn’t want to look at the open file on his computer anymore. His fingers itch to close the window and go to his Hunter folder, open one of the unfinished drafts there. Although he doubts he would be able to work, even on those. It’s been too long - a week is _too long_ \- and Liam is right, he needs inspiration.

With a sigh, Louis peeks at the screen through his fingers. The familiar words are still there. Somehow, his chat with Liam didn’t magically make them fix themselves, a quick glance is enough to make every error pop out.

 

_Chris’ cock throbbed, trapped in his jeans. It pushed painfully against his zipper. He’d been hard since he got in the car, and it hadn’t let up for the entire drive. Jason’s hand on his thigh was not helping, traveling higher and higher for every mile they covered until he was cupping Chris’ cock through denim, grip so firm it nearly made Chris’ hands slide off the wheel._

_“Eager,” Jason comments, almost casual in his manner, fingers squeezing Chris’ hard cock. “Don’t take your eyes off the road.”_

_“I am trying,” Chris mumbled. “Maybe if you weren’t touching my cock wh_

 

Yes, he’s definitely abusing the word cock. Four times in less than a hundred words? It’s overkill, even for Austin Williams. There’s a tense change there in the middle, and there’s something odd about the length of the sentences, something fake about the dialogue. Dialogue has always been Louis’ weak point, be it as Austin or Catherine. Thankfully, people aren’t exactly reading these books for the characters’ witty lines. As far as Louis is concerned when it comes to dialogue, he only needs to be good at dirty talk and desperate begging, and he’s quite talented at both, if he says so himself.

He hits the backspace key using a little more force than necessary, his other hand still over his face. The entire scene is a bust. Try as he might Louis cannot make Jason and Chris have any sort of believable chemistry, not even with the bar set as low as it is. Again, he thinks about opening a Hunter file for warm-up. But if he starts on one of those he’ll never finish this one, and Liam might actually murder him.

You never know with those calm types.

In a moment, the entire scene disappears from the screen. Maybe he can skip the drive to _Chris’_ place and go straight to the fucking, no foreplay, no buildup. He doubts it will matter. He already has that part down, he already knows who’s doing what and what sort of heated confession will come off it. He even has the last line written down (he always writes the last line in advance, it makes him feel grounded, as if he knows exactly where he’s going). His problem right now is everything in between, all the juicy bits.

He’s craving a cuppa.

Actually, he’s craving more than a cuppa. He needs to get out of his flat, walk downstairs and into Anne’s, sit at his usual table, get his usual order, and see the usual people. Person. One little look and Louis knows he will be good to go.

Louis sighs, resting back against his chair. Anne’s is still closed until tomorrow; it doesn’t matter how badly Louis needs his fix. He’ll have to settle with brewing his own tea - no pretty smiles and cheeky winks for him. Only him and his laptop, until one of them runs out of battery.

He’s filling the kettle, considering if he should bother writing yet another prepping scene for Jason and Chris or just dive right into the action, when he hears his phone chime with birds chirping and Louis almost drops the kettle into the sink.

There’s only one person who has a personalized ringtone in Louis’ phone.

He puts the kettle back on the counter and wipes his wet hands on his joggers, walking back to the table. Louis’ belly swoops. He has a new message.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_I missed you today. Evrythng ok? ur table looked lonely._

Louis frowns down at the screen. What is this boy talking about? Anne’s is closed, Louis has spent the last week sulking about it. He’s passed the dark windows every day on his way to the nearest Starbucks. He might even have peered through the blinds once or twice just in case they had changed their mind and didn’t need a vacation after all. He memorised every fancy loop on the little sign he had seen Harry write and tape to the glass door.

_Closed ‘til Wednesday, we’re sorry for the inconvenience !! :)_

Today is Wednesday, which means they are opening tomorrow, on Thursday. Louis has been counting the hours since the weekend.

Louis types out a reply - _?? You don’t open until tomorrow_ \- and sits back in his chair, eyes on his mobile. It takes less than a minute for it to chime again.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_no? We were open all day tday, even saved u a scone in the morning.._

_But I ate it at lunch, sorry! !_

Louis’ face falls. He can’t believe- fuck, he spent all day agonizing over his draft, he even forgoed his trip to Starbucks in order to focus, and Harry has been just downstairs, all lovely and smiley and probably tanned from his week in Brazil and Louis _missed_ it.

It’s already past seven. Anne’s doors are locked and the lights are probably off. Louis hates Jason and Chris more than ever.

Before he can send a new message, something that makes him sound unbothered and casual and not like the pathetic lump he actually is, his phone chimes again.

_had to come over to close and I have some carrot cake left_

_just put the kettle on too_

Louis’ belly flutters, and he doesn’t even bother to send a reply before grabbing his laptop and his charger and bolting out of the flat.

Any other day, Louis would feel a bit disgusted about how eager he is. But he’s had a rotten week, an even worse afternoon, and Harry and his dimples are always the best cure for everything.

The lift seems to take forever and Louis taps the fingers of his free hand against his thigh impatiently, listening to the ancient gears groan and clank, the sound echoing down the shaft. Earlier in the day, he might have braved the stairs, but the old marble steps are worn with use and the lights of all the top floors are perpetually out. With sunlight streaming through the small windows along the staircase, Louis is confident he could have made the trip. At seven in the evening and running solely on tea and cereal, Louis is almost certain that attempting the seven storey descent will end with a broken neck.

Or worse, a broken laptop.

When the lift finally whines to a stop in front of him, Louis wastes no time wrestling the old iron doors open. In his pocket, his mobile buzzes, but he ignores it in order to close the doors again and try not to stumble into them when the metal box lurches into motion. He’s resigned himself to all the drawbacks of living in a building built a hundred years ago - like the deathtrap he calls a lift or the way the pipes groan and clank when the heat turns on, the draft that always slips through the old windows, or the fact that he’s got no built-in closets. He’s come to realise the pros far outweigh the cons, and the main pro has to be the location.

Louis doesn’t realise he’s forgotten to put on a coat until he’s stepping outside and the frigid wind slaps him in the face. He curses under his breath - Harry makes him stupid. It’s a problem he lives with everyday. Luckily, the walk from his door to Anne’s is less than ten steps. Unluckily, Anne’s is indeed already closed, and the thirty seconds it takes for Harry to unlock the door are enough to leave Louis half numb and trembling.

The cold is the last thing on his mind once Harry appears in front of him, outlined by the soft light coming from inside and already smiling. Louis smiles back and somehow manages to get his frozen feet to move and carry him inside, where it’s warm and smells heavenly, like coffee and burnt sugar.

“Jesus, Lou, it’s freezing out,” is the first thing Harry says, his slow, syrupy voice wrapping around Louis like a thick coat. “You didn’t have to race here.”

The door closes with a thump and the little bell above it clinks. Louis tries to shake off the remnants of his chill, bouncing in place and turning to look at Harry properly. Harry is closer than he expected, though, already stepping into his space and putting his big hands on Louis’ arms. He rubs up and down in quick, sure movements, much like a fussy mum would a child.

Louis tries not to melt into the touch too obviously and instead takes in the sight of Harry finally in front of him again.

He’s wearing an apron tied around his waist with a loop that goes around him and ends in a little bow over his belly. His chest is uncovered, and Louis can see sooty fingerprints staining the white fabric of his t-shirt. His hair is held back with a yellow headband and his face is startlingly dark. As are his arms, and his neck, and the dip between his collarbones.

Just like that, Louis’ fingers are itching to write.

He wonders if he should rewrite his entire draft and set it in a beach town somewhere, where Jason’s and _Chris’_ skin always feels soft and warm to the touch and _Chris’_ nose can go pink and freckle a little like Harry’s is.

“Well, look at you,” Louis says when Harry steps back and he realises he’s been staring. “Did you leave the beach at all?”

“Not really,” Harry grins, dimpling all over the place, and Louis could fucking swoon. Harry makes him feel like a character in one of Catherine’s stories - giddy, like there’s a giggle constantly stuck in his throat. He sets his laptop down on the nearest table and shakes his cold fingers out in front of him, trying to get some feeling back.

“Well, you have no business looking like that in the middle of January,” he teases.

Harry bites his lip and smiles down at his feet before walking around Louis and back towards the counter, where two steaming cups are waiting.

“Here,” he says, bringing one over to Louis, who gratefully wraps his hands around the hot surface and sighs in relief. “You do like carrot cake, right? I couldn’t remember if you ever tried it here before.”

“Of course,” Louis answers, nose already half inside the cup. He only remembers that he’s wearing his glasses when they fog up with the steam, leaving him momentarily blind. “Love any cake as long as you baked it.”

Harry huffs out a laugh as he retrieves his own cup and a piece of cake, already on a delicate-looking plate, placing them not on the table where Louis dropped his stuff, but his usual one, the one a little hidden in a cranny between the counter and the wall. There’s a small sign on top, reading _Reserved_ in pink, loopy letters.

Louis’ chest feels tight.

“I didn’t bake this one, actually. Will you still try some?” Harry asks, pulling out a chair and sitting down heavily, and Louis wishes he were a better person and wouldn’t impose on Harry after what has clearly been a long day of work. As it is, he is terrible, and he brings his tea and laptop over and sits on the chair opposite with a smirk.

“I suppose I’ll have to.”

He tries the cake, which is amazing, and he drinks the tea, and then he opens his laptop and begins typing as Harry talks about his trip while sweeping the front of the shop, giggling at his own anecdotes and making Louis roll his eyes as his fingers fly over the keyboard. Listening to Harry’s voice, the pages on the word document he aptly saved as _when they find my rotting body blame this piece of shit_ begin to fill.

This is Harry’s superpower. One look at his lips and Louis can write poetry out of a blowjob. Harry's tattooed forearms have inspired more fictional wall sex than Louis can count; the sight of his jeans stretching tight over his bum once born an entire short story dedicated solely to the wonders of rimming. He has no use for the story, it sits in his hard-drive collecting metaphorical electronic dust, but the point is that it exists, and it’s all thanks to Harry. Lovely coffee shop Harry with his weird laugh and twinkling eyes. His big hands and his dimples. Broad shoulders and long legs and now Louis is getting sidetracked. It doesn’t necessarily make writing harder, though.

As Harry talks, Louis writes. He writes filthy, disgusting smut that will be published in a book full of more filthy, disgusting smut written by other people who probably don’t draw inspiration out of clueless curly-haired boys who are too friendly for their own good.

Louis stopped feeling guilty about his method a long time ago. Or at least that what he tells himself.

“Oh!” Harry stops sweeping all of a sudden and Louis looks up to see him grinning over at him from the other side of the cafe. “I got some drawing done for the end of term project I told you about.” His cheeks go pink under his tan. “You could look at it later, if you want.”

“Of course, love,” Louis says, turning back to his screen and scanning over the last words he typed down.

 

_Jason pistoned his hips against Chris’, the sound of skin slapping on wet skin nearly drowning out Chris’ ragged breathing, Jason’s quiet curses. He curled his hands on Chris’ hips and pulled them up when their knees started to slide on the bed, and the new angle drew a groan out of Chris. Jason could see the other man’s fingers digging into the sheets, twisting them in his fists, the back of his neck flushed a dark red, tendons standing out._

_“You like it like this, huh?” Jason muttered down at him. His hands pressed Chris’ shoulders down against the mattress until he heard Chris’ breath stutter, hips grinding back. When Jason pushed forward, the other man let out a plaintive whine, spine curving under Jason’s hands like putty. “Face down and ass up like a dog in heat. Panting for it.”_

 

Christ.

“Did you get any writing done while I was away?” Harry asks, resting his chin on the tip of the broomstick and leaning forward. Louis can barely stand the sight.

“You know I do my best writing with you,” Louis tells him honestly, although he keeps his tone light enough to sound like he isn’t as depressingly serious as he is.

“Mmh, I wonder if you’ll ever show me. I’ve shown you mine.”

A zip of heat runs down Louis’ belly and he looks away from Harry’s dirty grin and his waging eyebrows before he can make a fool of himself.

“Don’t be cheeky, Styles. You know my work is top secret.” And there’s a big, big difference between Harry’s work and Louis’, but Louis keeps his mouth shut about that. The less Harry knows, the better.

He chances a quick look towards the front only to catch Harry pouting and turning back to his cleaning. His apron is tight around his narrow waist, and it makes his back look massive, hidden muscles shifting underneath his shirt. Louis’ fingers twitch and he begins typing again.

The truth is, Louis knows he’s going to hell, if there is such a thing, but it isn’t because he writes erotic fiction for a living. If anything it’s because his muse, the reason he’s inspired to write about people shagging in increasingly creative ways every day, is the sweetest, loveliest, most genuine (and completely oblivious) future children’s-book illustrator in the world.

.

It was never Louis’ goal to make money writing porn. Writing professionally at all didn’t even really cross his mind until he was finishing college and still had no clue where to go from there. He liked music, and briefly considered going down that path, but it felt more like a fantasy than a serious career. He had friends who were going to uni to study marketing, business, law, all sorts of useful things Louis had no real drive to pursue. Instead he stayed in Manchester and got a shoddy job in sales. In his free time, he despaired, reassured his mum that he was _fine_ , and scribbled all over notebooks he nicked from the office. Tinkering around with song lyrics led to tinkering around with poems, and then to little stories, and then, finally, to a bigger story, his only really big story, which somehow turned into a published novel that Louis was (still is) incredibly proud of. The only one of his published works that he isn’t ashamed of, and the only one that amounted to nothing.

Nothing quite went in the expected direction after that.

The porn thing was supposed to be a one off, a favour for Liam, a good laugh and a couple of tipsy nights spent writing a little smutty something for an online publication that ended up getting way more attention than either him or Liam had anticipated.

He started writing weekly pieces and before he knew it, he was offered a small publishing deal by Liam’s employers, quit his day job, and dedicated himself solely to writing about knobs (and the occasional vagina). It isn’t a job he can brag about to his sisters or his mum, but it’s a steady paycheck as long as he churns out a constant stream of filth, and so far, Louis has always delivered.

Whether or not he enjoys it is not an issue, not as long as he can pay rent on time and still have enough left over to buy his siblings birthday presents and save up a little for a rainy day. He doesn’t need much, really, only a roof over his head, food on his table, and Harry within walking distance.

The Harry thing isn’t even about how gone Louis is for him, but mostly about work.

Harry has made everything better since the moment Louis met him, three years back, hyped up on caffeine and ignoring calls from Liam about the draft for his first Austin Williams book. Louis had been starting and deleting outlines for weeks, could not think of a single idea that would stick, something with enough meat to make up an entire book, not just a couple of pages. Something that would make a good story even with all the explicit sex Louis had to include. They’d given him an expected word count, of both the smut and the total, because he was writing romance novels now (as Liam calls them when he isn’t using words like _erotica_ ) and apparently the readers had certain expectations.

Three years ago, Louis unknowingly walked into Anne’s on opening day, thanking his luck he wouldn’t have to trek all the way to Starbucks in the rain after all. He sat at the table furthest from the door, his back to the wall so no one would be able to see his laptop screen. He hadn’t noticed the little cafe being built. Tucked away in a corner, it was small and charming and completely unremarkable from outside.

Harry was in front of him before Louis was finished uncurling his charger from around his arm. He didn’t remember doing that. His fingers had been a little shaky from the cold and all the coffee he’d been drinking since that morning, and it took him a moment to look up.

When he did, mouth open to ask for whatever would keep him up a few more hours, he froze.

“Welcome,” Harry said, smiling down at him, pristine little hat and matching apron adorning his body, hands behind his back. “My name’s Harry, I’ll be right over there to take your order when you’re ready.” He gestured to the counter, rocking back and forth on his heels. He looked like a kid playing shopkeeper. Except for the fact that he was very obviously very much not a kid. He was, however, very fit.

“O-oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I had to order before sitting down.” Louis began climbing out of his little nook, but Harry held his hands up. He had big hands. Louis decided right on the spot that his main character would have big hands, long fingers. Maybe green eyes, even though they weren't exactly commonplace. Harry had green eyes. They reflected the fairy lights set up along the edge of the counter.

“That’s alright, you don’t have to get up. We, um, we still haven’t decided how we’re going to run things, and I doubt anyone else’s coming in today. I can take your order here.”

Louis sat back down, looking around for the first time. The place was completely empty save for him and Harry and looked as neat and put together as Harry did. There were about ten tables in total, all different styles, and not a single chair matched another. The hardwood floors were gleaming, as if they had never been stepped on before, and everything else looked well kept but old, as if salvaged from fifty different thrift shops. It looked a little like a half-blind old lady had put it together and it wasn’t usually a style Louis appreciated, but Harry, with his pink cheeks and big doe eyes, looked right at home.

“Just opened?” Louis asked. It was the early afternoon, an odd time to open a coffee shop. “Or am I just the first one in today?”

“You’re my- our first customer all day. Ever. It’s opening day,” Harry said, doing cute little jazz hands at his sides, still smiling. “Except I’m the only one here because of the weather, so it’s not much of a celebration.”

“Excuse me, and what am I? I reckon we can make it a celebration just the two of us, never mind the babies scared of a little water.”

Just then, thunder cracked loud enough to rattle the windows, and Harry jumped and laughed, turning towards the sound.

“I’d call this more than a little water,” he said. Louis couldn’t look away from his profile. He had pretty eyelashes. His mouth was too pink for him not to be wearing some kind of lipgloss.

“Pish posh,” Louis sniffed, eliciting another laugh from Harry and feeling the cold leaving his body in a rush. He hoped he wasn’t blushing too obviously. “I’ll have a pot of tea and whatever’s good to eat.”

“Any tea preferences?” Harry turned his crinkly eyes towards him again. His main character was going to have a deep voice, Louis thought.

“Surprise me,” Louis said, even though he did have a preference, and Harry looked like the kind to bring him green tea or something silly like that.

Confirming Louis’ suspicions, five minutes later, Harry brought back a pot of herbal tea that left a flowery taste in Louis’ mouth and a piece of key lime pie that Louis devoured in four bites, resisting the temptation to lick his fork clean.

“This is brilliant,” he told Harry, who was busy wiping down the already spotless counter and monitoring the door. The storm had only gotten worse; Louis couldn’t see a single person walking outside through the windows. “Made it yourself?”

“Yeah, my mum’s supposed to be in charge of the cakes but it’s a long trip down from her house and with the weather….” He trailed off, a little furrow appearing between his eyebrows. His speech was slow, as if he considered each and every word before speaking it aloud. It gave Louis time to stare at him.

“Well, it was delicious, you should be proud,” Louis told him. Harry smiled down at the counter, a deep dimple digging into his cheek. “You mind if I do my work here? Or is it not festive enough?”

“No, of course! You can move to a bigger table if you want, and I can bring you more tea?”

“I quite like this spot, actually.” It was cozy and secluded and closest to Harry. “But if you have some Yorkshire lying about I’ll take a pot of that.”

Harry made him a fresh pot of tea, bringing over a little jar of milk without prompting and maybe Louis fell right then, but who really knows?

“It’s nice to have company,” Harry said as he moved back towards his place behind the counter. “I was starting to get lonely.”

“I won’t be much company, mate, sorry. I’ve got to finish this bloody draft if it kills me.”

“Are you a writer?”

Louis cringed slightly, cursing his big mouth, but nodded.

“Anything I might’ve heard of?” Harry asked, leaning forward on his forearms. Louis thought he could see the hint of a tattoo on his wrist beneath his lilac jumper.

“I doubt it, love.” Louis couldn’t bite back the pet name before it slipped out, but Harry didn’t seem to mind. “Nothing terribly popular.”

“You never know, I read quite a lot.”

Louis couldn’t picture Harry reading anything as trashy as Louis’ work, and as for his Tomlinson novel, well, Louis doubted more than a couple hundred people had read that. What were the chances of Harry being one of them?

Instead of answering, he sent Harry a wink he hoped came out playful rather than sleazy and turned towards his laptop.

Two hours later, he’d managed to write a character description, checking himself every time he went a little too far with the similarities, but he had gotten nowhere in regards to plot.

“Looks like it’s stopping,” Harry said softly and Louis quit his staring contest with his computer to look out the window. It was still raining, but not quite as furiously as it had been before.

“Think your helpers will make it?”

“I already told them not to bother. I mean, they were supposed to be here at six this morning, and I think I can manage you on my own.”

Louis squirmed in his chair, rolling his eyes to try not to show how much the words affected him. Harry had moved to a table himself, along with a cup of tea and a sketchbook he propped up against his knee.

“You draw?” Louis asked, nodding towards it.

“I try. I’m going to school for it.”

“Really? That’s cool, are you any good?”

Harry shrugged, looking a little shy, and Louis decided not to force him to show him any drawings yet. It wouldn’t be fair anyway, with him not planning on ever showing Harry his writing.

Harry went back to his work and Louis reluctantly went back to stare at his. What would be a good setting for a book? It needed to be exciting, it needed to hold people’s interest beyond the sex bits. He’d written a little bit of everything for his weekly stories, but nothing that had particularly interested him.

“What kind of books do you read?” he found himself asking, and Harry stopped drawing and pursed his lips in thought, tapping his pencil against his chin. It was adorable. How was Louis supposed to concentrate like this?

“I like crime novels?” Harry offered. There was a wry twist to his mouth, as if he was expecting Louis to mock him. “Like gruesome murders and jaded cops who are too old for this shit and such.”

Louis smiled. Crime novels. That was exciting. That was good.

“What about spy books?” he asked.

“That’s what you’re writing?” Harry perked up and Louis shrugged, mind already whirring.

“Thinking about it.”

“I haven’t read many spy books but I’d read yours.” Harry’s smile was both cheeky and hopeful, and Louis huffed out a laugh and shook his head.

“Nice try, Curly.” Harry had taken his cap off earlier and his hair had puffed up in a mess of brown curls atop his head, a little matted after being imprisoned for so long. Louis was still getting over it. “My work’s very private, you see. If I show you-”

“You’d have to kill me?”

“Well, no,” Louis said, a little startled. “But I’d be forced to leave, never to show my face around these parts again. And I quite like it here.”

“Oh, um, thank you,” Harry said, voice quiet. “Alright, better not, then. I can’t have my best customer never showing me his lovely face again.”

Louis felt his cheeks go warm, saw Harry’s darkening across the room, full lower lip caught between his teeth, and that’s when the little bell on the door chimed for the first time all day and a group of wet teenagers stumbled in.

Harry nearly spilled his tea in his haste to get up and hurry behind the counter.

Louis went back to work, a little unsettled. Harry was gorgeous, and Louis had walked into his store looking like he hadn’t showered in three days (he hadn’t), with coffee stains on his cuffs, and his glasses were missing an arm because the little screw kept falling out and he couldn’t be arsed to put in his contacts. Louis was sure Harry wasn’t actually flirting with him - it was probably part of his whole friendly barista persona. He would probably flirt with every customer that walked through the door.

Right on cue, Louis heard the group of teenagers laugh at something Harry said, and he peeked to the side to see them all leaning against the counter, acting way too familiar. Louis was sure he had heard Harry introduce himself to them before, so these weren’t his friends. They were only a group of people  just as charmed by Harry as Louis was, and he had no right to be annoyed.

Instead, he focused on outlining his story, something that suddenly felt possible, his head brimming with ideas. He typed in _crime/secret agent/spy???_ at the top and then somehow managed to come up with a handful of secondary characters, a proper team, an antagonist, a mission, and the climax of the entire thing. He even wrote down a last line, and felt suddenly so relieved he slumped in his seat, smiling at the twenty or so pages he had filled.

When he looked up, the shop was empty again, it was considerably darker outside, and Harry was sitting at the table across the room again, eyes on his sketchbook.

Frowning, Louis checked his screen and did a double take at the time.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry, I completely lost track of time,” he said, and Harry smiled at him, barely looking away from whatever he was busy drawing.

“Yeah, I know how that is,” he said. “But you got some work done, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Louis sighed. He slid his fingers beneath his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “I’ve been trying to get this done for weeks, I think this place is magic.”

Harry's smile grew.

“Does that mean you’ll be back?”

Louis licked his lips. God, he felt wretched, the exhaustion of the last few weeks suddenly catching up to him, and looking at Harry, with his glossy curls and pretty face, made him even more aware of just how disgusting he probably looked himself.

“I think I will.”

Harry refused to let Louis help him close up, wouldn’t even let him wipe down his table. When Louis was standing by the door - waiting for Harry to unlock it because apparently the shop had closed an hour before - Harry brought over a flowery umbrella from behind the counter.

“I’m only like ten minutes away, you can take it,” he said, arm out. Louis laughed, mostly to hide how touched he was.

“I live just upstairs, so I think you need it more than me, babe.”

Harry’s cheeks flushed.

“So you’ll really be back, then. You’ve no excuse.”

“I wasn’t planning on making excuses,” Louis said, and then wondered if Harry had offered his umbrella just so Louis would bring it back. The idea made him have to bite back a smile.

When Harry had the door open and Louis was preparing for his short run, a thought popped into his head.

“I haven’t paid you!”

“Oh, that’s alright, it was on the house.”

“No way, you’ve barely had people over, let me at least pay for the cake.”

But Harry shook his head, curls swaying.

“You were my first ever customer, I think that’s reason enough to get a treat.”

“Mate-”

“I insist,” Harry said and Louis dropped it, still feeling guilty. “Make it up to me by getting another cake soon.”

“Alright, I will.”

Louis stepped outside, hiding under the awning, and was about to walk away when he felt a tug on his sleeve.

He looked over his shoulder at Harry.

“You never said your name.” He had to raise his voice over the sound of the rain falling around them.

“It’s Louis.”

Harry’s smile was the biggest yet, and he let go of Louis’ jumper to wave goodbye. Louis was lucky he didn’t slip on a puddle and fall on his face before he made it into his building.

Later, when Liam berated him about sending him a proper draft, Louis wasn’t bothered. He’d finally found inspiration, and it came in the form of a lanky art student who made delicious treats for a living and had the prettiest smile Louis had ever seen.

He’s been writing about people having sex and falling in love - and in lust - for years, but Louis still hasn’t been able to put into words the way Harry has made him feel since the day they met.

.

The Jason and Chris story gets turned in on Thursday night with a few hours to spare. It ends up coming out a lot kinkier than Louis anticipated, but Liam doesn’t complain or ask him to change anything, although Louis knows he will probably make his usual comments about Louis’ awkward dialogue and unrealistic refractory times later.

To celebrate, Louis takes a small break from writing and spends his weekend bugging Harry at work, up before the sun when it’s Harry’s turn to open the shop and helping clean up when he works the later shift. It’s been years since Harry’s had to man the shop by himself, and even though it’s nice to see him well rested and chirpy, Louis misses all the time they used to spend alone. These days, there’s always at least one other person helping out during the day, especially during breakfast and tea rush hours, and a pastry baker back with the ovens early in the morning. Harry’s mother (the shop’s namesake) stops by every other day to bake cream cakes and muffins, and Harry is only ever by himself right after midday or late in the evening.

On a normal day, Louis is writing at his table for the duration of Harry’s shift, sometimes longer if he’s on a roll. With no work obligations, Louis can sit behind the counter instead. Sometimes Harry will let him be in charge of the till, and sometimes he just sits there to look pretty and chat with the other regulars.

Saturday is spent mostly with Harry, though, because it’s freezing out and Harry calls Niall and tells him not to come in. Only a few insane people brave their way out of their houses, Louis among them. None of the customers who show up are familiar, most of them just passersby looking for shelter for a little while.

It’s always warm inside the shop and the lights have a soft, cozy orange tint to them. Every time he watches someone put on their coat and leave, Louis wonders how they can choose to be anywhere but here.

When they’re alone, Louis puts on music from Harry’s oldies playlist and Harry brings out his sketchbook. He has a small jar of coloured pencils on a shelf below the counter, and Louis is in charge of passing them over one by one at Harry’s request. Over the years, he’s gotten quite good at telling each shade of blue, green and orange from each other. Harry’s a good teacher.

“So, is this part of that project of yours, then?” Louis asks, handing Harry vermilion and taking chartreuse back.

“Uh-huh,” Harry mumbles, eyes not leaving the paper.

“You never showed me what you worked on when you were away.”

“I don’t think I’ll be using those after all,” Harry says, carefully putting details on a lemon tree Louis has been watching slowly come to life since that morning. “I always like what I draw here better.”

“Here in England?”

Harry laughs. “Here at the shop.”

“I always said this place was magic, didn’t I?” Louis agrees and looks around them, at the striped wallpaper and Harry’s artwork lovingly framed and put on display by his mother.

When he looks back at Harry, he’s already looking at Louis.

“I think it might be you, actually,” Harry says softly. His gaze is somewhat intense when he stares, and Louis always feels pinned into place by it. He thinks it would be a little creepy, if Louis weren’t so gone over everything about Harry.

Louis laughs with a roll of his eyes, taking the chance to look away. Harry is always saying things that make Louis’ belly go warm and his heart speed up. Harry’s like that with everyone, Louis just has a hard time remembering that he’s not exactly special. Not when he’s heard the boy sweet talk the espresso machine when it acts up.

“I’m serious, Lou,” Harry insists, a slight whine creeping in his tone.

“If I’m magic then why did a fifty-page draft nearly cost me my sanity?”

“You can’t rush art,” Harry says with a sniff and a smile.

“What I do’s not art, Haz.” This is a familiar back and forth, and Louis is only half invested in it, more interested in watching the way Harry plays with the pencil in his hand, poking his lips with it as he thinks about what to say next.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” he seems to settle with. “Show me and let me be the judge.”

Louis shakes his head, sitting back on the stool behind the till and poking the pencils in the jar on his lap. Coral, amber, teal. Louis can name most of them.

“You could work on something that makes you happy,” Harry goes on after a moment. “You could write something else.”

“I’m not good at anything else,” Louis admits quietly and it’s the first time he’s said it out loud. It stings a little.

“I don’t believe that,” Harry argues hotly, getting all indignant on Louis’ behalf. It makes Louis smile. “Did someone say that to you?”

“No, Haz, it’s just- it is what it is, yeah? I don’t _hate_ what I do.” It just makes him feel a little empty. It’s not what Louis wants to be writing, but he doesn’t know how to start doing anything else. Every time he goes to click on the LWT folder on his computer he tenses up and his stomach turns uncomfortably. He always ends up writing Hunter instead.

“You don’t love it, though,” Harry says, and now he sounds sad. “Is it writing you don’t enjoy? Or _what_ you’re writing?”

“I love writing, I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

“And can’t you write something you love?”

Louis hesitates only for a moment before saying, “I did, once.”

“And?”

“And it didn’t work out.” Louis places the pencil jar on the counter. Harry seems distracted from his drawing and Louis is fidgeting so much that he’s afraid he’ll drop it. “It’s not enough to do what you love.”

“It can be,” Harry says with a frown. “You think I plan on making it big with children’s books? I’ll be lucky if I get even one published, and that’ll probably be independently. I won’t stop just because it doesn’t make money. I’ll work doing anything as long as I can keep doing this at the same time.” He gestures at his sketchbook.

“You have your shop and you love it, Harry,” Louis sighs. “And you’re brilliant, you’ll get published, I know you will.”

Louis is ready to pull a couple of frayed strings to move things along for Harry, not that he’s planning on telling him that.

“It’s my mum’s shop, and I won’t work here forever. I’m graduating soon.”

The G word. Louis doesn’t want to even think about a time Harry won’t be just downstairs anymore.

“What would you like to write?” Harry asks, finally putting his sketchbook aside. “If you didn’t have to worry about money and you could do whatever you wanted.”

“I- I don’t know.” He hasn’t thought about it in a long time.

Harry looks at him as if he’s not buying it. Louis’ shoulders slump.

“Adventure books are fun. And like, fantasy. Not like Frodo and the orcs and all that but, um, magic? I guess. And romance.” His face burns. “The kind that doesn’t happen right away, and you want to tear your hair out because it’s so drawn out but worth it, when it finally happens. Stories about ordinary people doing amazing things, even - even if they’re small things.” Kind of like giving a sleep-deprived stranger a place to feel at home, and the will to keep pushing through even if it still feels a little hopeless. That, Louis doesn’t say.

There’s a moment of quiet when he finishes talking, the only sound between them the weird cuckoo clock that hangs over the front door. When Louis dares a look at Harry, he finds him smiling down at his hands.

“Sounds like my favourite kind of book,” he says, voice soft.

Louis clears his throat, the moment suddenly feeling too heavy. “Children’s books are cool, too,” he says. “I wrote one for my little sisters once. Did all the drawings as well.”

Harry’s head snaps up, a gleam in his eye, one side of his mouth twitching.

“You never told me that.”

Louis shrugs, “I was fifteen, they were terrible. I quite liked how the story turned out, though.”

“Show me,” Harry says. “It’s not work, so you can at least show me, I really want to read something of yours.”

“I promise you don’t, but,” Louis wavers. This is Harry. He can show a silly kid’s story he wrote over a decade ago to Harry. “I can look for it later and send it to you.”

Harry seems pleased with himself, and he asks Louis for the ochre pencil, which Louis only guesses wrong once. For a few minutes, it looks like they’ve moved on from the subject of Louis’ disillusion with his professional life, but then Louis sees the pencil stop in Harry’s hand.

“Lou?” He looks at Louis from beneath his eyelashes. God, that very same tentative expression has inspired so much imaginary sex that Louis can barely stand to look at it.

“Yeah?”

“You’re not working on anything right now, right?”

“Not until Monday, I guess,” Louis says. He manages his own hours, but he still likes to keep an organized schedule. After agonizing over his last story for weeks, he’s almost looking forward to working on a Hunter for a while.

“Could you do something for me?”

“Of course,” Louis agrees quickly. Harry doesn’t need to ask.

“Could you try to write something for yourself? I mean, something you’re not getting paid to write. Even if you hate it and you have to force yourself and you hate me for making you.”

“Haz-”

“Please? I hate to see you down about this. Just try. Please.”

“I’m not _down_ -”

“Louis,” Harry says, mock stern, mouth pursed into a frown and eyes narrowed.

“Harry,” Louis mimics Harry’s tone, but he can't quite keep from sounding more endeared than he means. “Didn’t we just establish that you can’t rush art?”

“I’m not asking for a masterpiece,” Harry argues gently. “It doesn’t even have to be long, only something that you enjoy.”

Louis drums his fingers on the table, eyes not leaving Harry’s, which have widened in a silent plea. He feels himself deflate.

“Alright,” he sighs and smiles at Harry’s silly fist pump and quiet little _yes_. “But I’m not promising anything good.”

“I’m not even gonna respond to that, I’m too happy,” Harry says, going back to his drawing with a grin. “This is a dream come true for me, you know. Think of it as an early birthday present.”

There’s a pang in Louis’ chest, of either affection or trepidation. Showing Harry his work has always seemed so unthinkable an idea it’s hard to wrap his head around the fact that he has to come up with something in a day. He hasn’t written anything that hasn’t ended in explicit sex in three years and he wonders if he still can. At this point, the Pavlovian response to opening a word document on his laptop is for his mind to go straight to the gutter. Whatever he’s bringing over to show Harry will feature no cocks,  unless he’s writing about a farm, which Louis knows nothing about. So.

He’s fucked.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :))

Hunter was officially born, name and all, the day after Louis met Harry for the first time. It was still raining, and Louis felt a little sheepish going into Anne’s at eight in the morning when he’d been there less than twelve hours before. Whatever hint of embarrassment he might have been feeling vanished when Harry made his way from the back of the shop and his face lit up like the sun upon seeing Louis standing there.

“Morning!” he said over the music coming from the speakers set around the place. Led Zeppelin. An unexpected choice, given the grandmotherly vibe of the place. “You didn’t wait long at all.”

Louis willed his cheeks not to flush.

“Well, I actually got things done yesterday. Figured I could test if this place is really magic or if it was a fluke.”

Harry nodded, dimples out. “A good reasoning, that. Tea?”

Harry brewed a pot as Louis set up on the table he’d sat at the day before. The shop looked as pristine as it had then, fresh flowers on the counter and all.

“No helpers today either?” he asked as he plugged in his laptop, speaking mostly to the floor, bent in half as he was. “They really don’t like rain, huh? Do they know they live in England?”

When he straightened, Harry was standing in front of him, pot and cup in hand.

“My mum’s coming over later. And someone will help me close in the evening.”

“Are you planning on working twelve hour days by yourself everyday?” Louis asked, slightly horrified at the prospect.

“More like fourteen,” Harry said with a shrug. “Until we can afford to hire more people. Or my classes start, whichever happens first.”

“When’s that?”

“Mid-January.” Harry walked back behind the counter. “Don’t even say anything, I know.”

Louis closed his mouth. That was less than three weeks away. There was no way they would start making profit so soon, and either way, Harry was going to collapse before that.

“I’m sturdier than I look,” Harry said, again reading Louis’ thoughts. He flexed his long arms as if to show Louis how strong he was. At the time, Harry was a (very pretty and charming) beanpole. “Would you mind keeping an eye on the door while I check on the croissants? I promise I’ll only be a second. I’ll even let you have one on the house.”

“You need to stop giving food away if you want to start making a profit, mate,” Louis told him, but waved him away all the same.

No one came into the shop and Louis wrote an entire paragraph, introducing the main character he’d come up with the day before. Talking to Harry was like taking writing steroids. Five minutes and Louis was bursting with words, his quickfire typing mingling with Robert Plant’s crooning and the sound of raindrops hitting the window panes.

When he was back, Harry presented Louis with a warm croissant, the crust flaky and perfect, and then made himself busy cleaning, arranging the rest of the pastries on the little baskets behind the counter, and updating the chalkboard sign placed near the windows.

Louis went back to his work and when he resurfaced a few hours later, it was nearly eleven and no one had come in. Harry sat at the table he had chosen the day before, sketchbook in hand, but he kept glancing at the door, lip caught between his teeth.

“I’m sure people’ll start to show when the weather lets up,” Louis offered, hating the worried expression on Harry’s face.

Harry smiled over at him, eyes warm.

“It’s my own fault for being impatient,” he said. “I knew this week’d be miserable, but I couldn’t wait.”

“I’ll advertise for you.”

“Yeah?”

Louis nodded, taking a sip from his cup and grimacing at the splash of cold tea on his tongue. Harry was up and taking the pot away without prompting.

“I’ll tell everyone I know about Anne’s and its magical cakes.”

He heard Harry chuckle from behind the counter.

“If you have flyers I can put them on the building’s bulletin board.”

“I _could_ make some flyers,” Harry said when he was back with a fresh pot. Louis smiled up at him.

“Make them flashy, we want them to stand out from all the rubbish on there.”

That day, Louis drank four pots of tea, ate a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch that he was quite sure was not on the menu, and had more of the key lime pie from the day before. He also wrote twenty thousand words and met Harry’s mum for the first time.

That day, he baptized his main character Hunter Page. Hunter after an argument about shades of green Louis was sure Harry was making up until they googled colour charts, and Page in honour of Jimmy Page’s classic guitar solo (and Harry’s mellow air guitar solo) in _Black Mountain Side_. He paid for everything he ordered and left Harry a tip he hoped covered everything from the day before, and then went home and slept for a solid eight hours.

He went back to Anne’s the following day, and by the end of that week, Harry had unknowingly inspired his first half-dozen pages of smut - a handjob he’d written after watching Harry’s fingers fiddle with his apron for a couple of minutes too long. Louis couldn’t quite meet his eye afterwards.

It wasn’t like he wrote _about_ Harry. Hunter looked nothing like him, they didn’t behave the same, they didn’t talk the same. Louis didn’t actually picture Harry when he wrote about Hunter shagging his way through the United Kingdom. It was only that Harry managed to open this door in Louis, he freed Louis in a way, and suddenly writing didn’t feel like work at all.

It’s gotten a lot easier to quell the guilt over the years. Louis likes writing Hunter much more than he does anything else these days. In a way, Harry is the one who has kept him going, kept him working, kept him somewhat happy with what he does. So when Harry asks Louis to write him a story, Louis has to try. He owes Harry at least that much.

.

Back in the day, when Louis only wrote for fun and swore he would die before showing any of his stories to anyone, he used to give himself little challenges. On Sunday, Louis tries everything that used to work. He opens a book to a random page, looks for the first noun, verb and adjective in a paragraph and writes a sentence with them. He puts his iPod on shuffle and tries to write something based off the first song that comes up. He turns on the TV and types down the first thing he hears, tries to use it as a line of dialogue.

Nothing works.

Every time he starts to write, he begins to suspect he’s repeating himself, using formulas he’s used before, a turn of phrase he usually saves for Hunter, a situation he already used on a dirty short story. It starts to feel as if he’s wasted all his good lines on porn, and now he has nothing left in him that can be turned into anything else - he’s all dried up.

After three hours of suffering, he silently apologises to Harry and throws in the towel. He opens a Hunter file, the one he’s further along with, the one he’s planning to pitch as the fourth Hunter novel. He’s due one - his last Austin book was published eight months ago and his contract stipulates he has to write at least two full length books a year with either of his aliases, as well as one short story a month for the online publication.

He hasn’t worked on this draft in a few weeks, but seeing the familiar words fill his screen makes all the tension leave his shoulders.

 

_Hunter could feel Barrett’s eyes on him, just like he always did after this kind of mission. It made his skin crawl, and he couldn’t wait to get out of the cramped van and into a hot shower. He knew rest wouldn’t come for hours though. They still needed to report back to headquarters and he had to hand in the disk and the sample. There would be no shower before handing in the sample._

_Hunter shifted, slumping against the wall of the van more heavily. There was not a single muscle in his body that wasn’t aching. He could hear Marv and Polly bantering in the front seat and the muffled sound of guitars coming from Deacon’s headphones. He could still feel the mark’s grip around his wrists, the coarse hair of his thighs pressed against his own skin, could still hear his voice, promising to fuck him so deep he’d be able to taste it._

_Hunter shuddered and clenched around nothing. Barrett could act disgusted if he wanted to, but Hunter got things done, always had, so who could blame him if he enjoyed himself in the process. It wasn’t like anyone else was volunteering to take his place._

 

Sometimes Louis is a little jealous of Hunter. Sure he’s a bit of a slag, but he’s happy most of the time, when he’s not being shot at or chased by criminals or being written up for inappropriate behaviour at the office. Hunter’s job makes him happy _and_ gets him off. And when he’s lonely, he’s not too scared or too lazy to go out and look for company. Also, Adrian Barrett’s in love with him, even if they’re both too jaded to realize yet.

A good portion of Louis’ readers have caught on on Barrett’s pining, and most of them have been begging for a sex scene. Louis has only ever been able to give them a confusing dream that left Hunter sticky and angry at himself. Louis knows he wants them to end up together, but he also knows that making it happen would mean the end of the Hunter Page series and he’s not quite ready to let go yet.

He writes for less than twenty minutes before his phone buzzes at his elbow.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_Writing yet? (pencil emoji)_

_We’re rooting for u!_

Louis is about to ask who _we_ is when a photo comes through. It’s Harry, eyes looking impossibly bright and green, smile big and cheek pressed against a white and brown cat who doesn’t look too happy about being manhandled.

 _Who’s that?_ Louis sends, endeared and absolutely ignoring Harry’s question.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_Gemma’s cat, lorenzo_

_im babysitting..Catsitting? Hes staying over_

Louis nearly drops his phone when he reads the cat’s name. Either Harry’s sister is a Catherine Darling reader or the universe likes to play cruel jokes on Louis.

_Lorenzo?_

It takes a couple of minutes for Harry to reply, and Louis tries to go back to Hunter but he’s distracted (and starting to feel guilty about not keeping his promise). When his mobile buzzes, Louis all but lunges at it, grateful for the excuse not to stare at his laptop screen.

_I named him it suits him_

Alright. So either _Harry_ is a Catherine Darling reader or the universe really, really hates Louis. Louis doesn’t ask about the cat’s name again, he thinks he’d rather not know, and instead sends back a star emoji for no reason at all.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_So about th e writing…? Dont let us down lou!_

Louis is tempted to pretend like he never reads the text. He’s put a small dent on this Hunter story, and there’s some research he has to do about stab wounds (a surprising first after writing crime novels for three years). He really doesn’t want to stop, but then another picture comes through. Harry pouting up at the camera, Lorenzo blurry next to him and chewing on his hair.

Louis sighs for what feels like a whole minute.

He saves and closes the Hunter file, backs it up on an external drive, and then opens a new document. Only then does he respond.

_I’m on it, you’re interrupting._

**H (teacup emoji):**

_Sorry!!_

_If yo u write aswell as u txt then i alreayd know it will be great_

Louis laughs and has to stop himself from saying something about Harry’s big clumsy fingers. He shouldn’t talk to Harry about his fingers. Somehow it feels as if he’d be crossing a line. His relationship with Harry’s fingers is one hundred percent one sided and it should remain as is.

_Lorenzo sends his best! :) !_

Louis forcibly removes himself from his phone before the stupid smile on his face gets stuck there. Looking away from Harry’s texts only puts him face to face with the blank page on his screen, always a good sobering tool. His smile drops, and his head starts to throb faintly. He has to do this, for Harry. He has to be able to, otherwise something is definitely wrong with him. He can’t only be capable of writing porn. He can’t.

Louis sits and sits and drinks tea that is not half as good as the one he gets at Anne’s and sits some more. He doesn’t write a single word and every minute that passes makes his belly twist tighter and tighter. He has to be able to do this.

What does Harry like? He remembers Harry telling him he likes crime novels, of course. That moment is engraved in Louis’ mind as the moment everything took a turn for the irreversibly committed. The moment Hunter was born, and with him, a seemingly never ending well of ideas and momentum, as long as Louis writes about him and only him - everything that’s not him, even Lorenzo, takes coercing and effort and more than a few frustrated tears. Louis never likes anything else half as much as he likes everything Hunter. Almost the same way a cup of tea is never quite as good if Harry doesn’t make it.

Harry likes tea.

Harry likes cakes and pastries. He loves sunny days that bring people outside and stumbling into his shop. He loves drawing, he loves breaking open new sketchbooks and he loves to go over old ones, seeing pages full of his work. He likes 70s music.

Louis puts his fingers on the keyboard. He unfocuses his eyes and imagines a bedroom, soft sunlight streaming through a dusty window, a record player letting out quiet music, something Harry likes, Stevie Nicks. He pictures a body under the covers, sleep warm, a long leg sticking out, a tumble of curls on the pillow. He pictures posters on the walls, and canvas trainers scattered on the floor.

He begins to type, slow, like pulling teeth, but it’s something. He refuses to backspace or read through what he writes.

A boy appears, out of nothing, taking shape in Louis’ mind and on his screen, each word making him a little more solid. It’s not Harry Louis sees, just like Hunter is not Harry, but he’s made up of bits and pieces that could belong to him. He sees a boy just out of his teens, much like Harry was when he met him, lying on a narrow bed in his childhood room.

The room is in a second-storey flat, and normally the traffic noise coming through the window is enough to drag him out of bed with the sun. But it’s the summer, and it’s a Saturday, the street is quiet and this boy has no reason to get up yet. He’s tired, he didn’t go to bed until early morning, and Louis makes a note to find out why.

He writes three pages of nothing. Three pages of a boy sleeping in after a rough night, fighting against the sunlight and the pressure on his bladder. Louis remembers being a teenager and waking up on summer days with no plans and no obligations and tries to put that feeling into words. Thinks of being an adult and trying to ignore reality for five minutes longer, staying in that place of blissful nothingness before opening his eyes.

He thinks of a boy standing between the two, between being free and not, sensing adulthood looming and already starting to crumble under expectations and decisions-to-make and the certainty that he should have things figured out by now, he’s there, almost all grown up, shouldn’t he get up from bed and know where he’s going?

He writes three pages (the number he decided was reasonable enough for Harry) and then keeps going. He has no direction, can’t think of a last line to write if he tried, but he can’t seem to stop.

Louis finally forces himself to sit back when his stomach starts growling, and he’s startled to realize it’s gotten dark around him.

He saves the document, makes his usual backup, and sits there for another minute, trying to shake off the need to keep going.

It’s a silly, pointless story he’s writing under duress. It’s not supposed to mean anything.

He goes to sleep still thinking about it.

.

Writing his first novel was both a breeze and the most excruciating experience of Louis’ life. He didn’t set up to do it - one day he sat down to write, and next thing he knew, he’d filled sixty pages and was not dry yet. On the contrary, the more he typed, the more he wanted to add, the more he wanted to explore this world he had created, all the people in it.

The finished thing was, when Louis sneakily printed it at the office, two-hundred and seventy-eight pages. Louis had to change the ink cartridge once, half-afraid he was going to get caught and fired for misuse of company property or something. None of his dead-eyed colleagues seemed to even notice what he was doing.

He read through the entire thing enough times to have certain passages memorized, made notes on the margins, scratched out sentences and wrote down paragraphs in pen wherever they fit.

He edited until he couldn’t bear to look at the words anymore, and then found a publisher, got scammed (but published) and then was too embarrassed and heartbroken to tell anyone about what had happened. He couldn’t even bring himself to give a copy of the book to his mum.

He met Liam while researching for loopholes in his contract. Liam had gone through something similar before, and he had tons of sympathy for Louis but little advice. He had just gotten a job editing for a small publishing house that was looking for talent. They had a fairly popular website where they tested out new writers before signing them. Him and Louis went out to get drinks one evening and the next thing Louis knew, he was getting paid to write porn.

“ _Erotic fiction_ ,” Liam corrected over drinks, the night he asked Louis to send him a sample of his writing. “S’what we do. It’s a popular genre, more than you’d think.”

Louis toasted to that.

.

When Louis goes down to Anne’s on Monday, he walks into the door when it fails to open under his hand and he’s got too much momentum to stop in time. He grunts, his laptop pressed against his stomach, and blinks at the little _Closed :(_ sign hanging from inside the glass pane.

Frowning, Louis looks at the front of the shop, dark and with the drapes still closed, and then digs his mobile out of his jacket pocket to check the time. It’s after seven. Mondays are flour delivery days and Harry is never late.

Louis walks back to his building and goes into the entrance hall, where it’s only slightly warmer than outside. He’s not even done typing up a message for Harry when his phone starts to ring.

“Haz,” he says in lieu of a proper greeting. “Everything alright?”

“Morning, Lou,” Harry says, and he sounds awful, nose stuffy and voice hoarse. “I don’t know if you’ve been to the shop but I’m not there.”

Louis laughs, can’t help himself, and starts waking back towards the lift.

“Rough night?”

“‘M’ _sick_ ,” he says, and the whine in his voice makes Louis laugh again. He stands outside the lift, not wanting the call to drop if he gets in, and adjust his grip on his laptop.

“Aw, poor baby,” he coos. “Did Lorenzo the cat leave a window open last night?”

“Yeah, actually. Gemma said he likes to go out and doesn’t mind the cold.

“Are you serious?” Louis asks.

“Yeah.” He doesn’t even sound embarrassed. “Sorry I won’t be there today, Niall’s going over around ten.”

Louis doesn’t think Harry’s missed a day of work once since they’ve known each other, so he really must feel bad. He considers offering to bring him soup or something, but discards it quickly. There’s no way for the offer not to sound dirty coming from him - he’s written it as a line too many times. It usually leads to ill-advised sex and shared colds in his stories. In real life, if Louis would ever be allowed to bring Harry soup when he’s sick, he’d never initiate sex while Harry feels poorly. Some of his characters are twats, he knows, but Liam insists people like them. Louis has stopped being puzzled by it and chooses not to read too much into it.

He tries to write mostly about nice people getting it on, anyway, since it makes him feel a little better to give nice people happy endings.

He listens to Harry cough on the other end of the line for a few seconds.

“That’s shit, Haz, I’m sorry Lorenzo’s trying to kill you.”

“He’s not, he’s a good boy,” Harry says, but to Louis he sounds like he’s only saying it because the cat is within earshot. Harry’s definitely the kind of person who would want to spare an animal’s feelings.

“Shut the window and go back to bed,” Louis orders, wondering what Harry’s flat looks like, his room. “Text me if you need anything, yeah? Or to let me know you haven’t drowned in snot.”

Harry makes a disgusted noise, half covered by his laugh.

“I wanted my story,” he grouses, and he sounds pitiful, all nasal and sleepy. “My birthday present.”

“Your birthday’s not for a week, I think you can wait.”

“You finished it?”

Louis hums, not a yes, not a no. He’s trying not to think about the story. It’s Monday morning and he has Hunter to go back to. His actual work, for which he gets paid.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he says when Harry whines at him, smiling at the ground. “Go, feel better, watch out for that cat.”

“Have a good day, Lou. I’ll miss you,” Harry tells him quietly, almost like he’s falling back asleep already, and Louis wants to be with him so badly his throat almost closes up with it. He’s a bit sad, Louis, so scared of reading Harry wrong, of his own wishful mind playing tricks on him, that he has to ignore every sweet thing Harry says or does for him and write it off as Harry being a sweet person in general. And he _is_ sweet to everybody, it’s just that sometimes he uses this tone with Louis that Louis never hears him use with anyone else.

It always makes Louis go a little tongue-tied. It makes him panic.

“See you soon, bro,” he says hurriedly and ends the call before Harry can get another word in. _Bro?_ He is an embarrassment.

Louis goes back upstairs. He lives on the seventh floor, a fairly big corner flat where he doesn’t spend that much time anymore, not since Harry. Anne’s is directly below him (seven storeys below him, semantics), and while the round corner architecture of the shop makes it quirky and gives it character, for Louis’ flat it just means he has a hard time placing furniture, and everything in his living room is pushed to the center of the room due to the lack of straight walls and proper corners.

Louis can’t remember the last time he spent a Monday morning in his flat since Anne’s opened, not counting Harry’s vacation last week, when he at least knew Harry wasn’t at work because he was living it up and getting tanned in South America. Now he feels slightly off-kilter, the dim morning light hitting the windows at the wrong angle and the street below too quiet.

He makes some tea.

It’s alright. Not the best, not Harry’s, but warm after his short walk outside. He sits at the kitchen table with his laptop and goes to his writing folder. He’s meant to be working, he has a lot of progress to make on the Hunter story, but he directs the cursor straight to his LWT folder and the file he titled _for harry._ He scrolls down, amazed all over again at the amount he managed to write without anyone taking their prick out, and then reads over the last couple of paragraphs. He corrects a few mistakes, deletes a repeated word here and there and adds a sentence at the bottom. Then another, and another after that, and then he spends the morning ignoring work and writing Harry’s story instead.

He’s still directionless, but he’s starting to see a path ahead, there’s a place each word he adds is leading him to, and although he’s not quite sure where that is, he wants to find out more than anything.

Harry texts him throughout the day, sends him photos of his sister’s cat wreaking havoc in his flat, of the stew he heats up for lunch, of the view outside a small window Louis believes is his bedroom’s - he can see the top of a scraggly tree outside, and rumpled blue and pink bedding inside. He says that he will not be sending Louis any selfies, unless Louis wants to see what he looks like sweaty and snotty, and Louis has to make himself decline the offer.

Every message Harry sends spurs Louis on, and the pages keep filling, almost as if they’ve been bottled inside of him all this time and he only needed Harry’s small push to knock them out.

It’s the afternoon when his phone starts to ring, and Louis doesn’t even check the screen before putting it against his ear.

“I said I’m working on it,” he grumbles, making himself sound more exasperated than he really feels. Harry has spent the last hour whining about his story and Louis can’t let him realize his prodding is more than welcome.

“You did?” a voice says, and Louis startles, for a second at a complete loss.

“Lime?” he asks after a confused second. Liam’s answering sigh is unmistakable. “Thought you were someone else.”

“Your muse?”

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Louis asks, ignoring him, eyes still on his computer, the fingers of his right hand still on the keyboard.

“I’m sending you a revised draft for you to look over. Are you home? Or are you at that coffee place?”

For a moment, Louis has no idea what Liam is talking about. Then he remembers - Jason and Chris, the anthology story, _rewrites_ \- and he wants to bang his forehead against the table.

“You’re done with it already? It’s only Monday,” Louis says, not even trying to hide the whine in his voice.

“Yeah, and we’re on a deadline. I need it revised by tomorrow morning. If you do a good job, that’s the last you’ll hear of me for at least a week.”

A week without screening Liam’s calls sounds like heaven to Louis, but he still doesn’t want to stop with Harry’s story. What if he can’t start up again tomorrow? He doesn’t want to waste what inspiration he has on Jason and Chris. He’s not quite ready to leave this world he’s created overnight, with the soft, muted colours and old-fashioned clothes. His main character doesn’t have a name yet, but Louis already feels closer to him than he’s done with most of the other characters he’s written before, and he doesn’t want to give it up, not even for a day.

But. Work is work, and Louis owes Liam, respects Liam enough not to toy with his job, so as much as it pains him, Louis says, “Send it to my place, please.”

“Good lad,” Liam says and Louis scowls.

“Don’t patronize me, Payne. I’m older than you, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I did, actually, what with you calling me to whine like a little kid.”

“That was days ago, people change, Liam. I was in a dark place.”

“And where are you now?”

Louis looks at the words he’s written in the last day, at the notes he’s been jotting on the back of an old Thai food menu, and he can’t even bring forth half of the frustration he was feeling the week before, when Harry was still away and every word he typed felt as if it was being peeled off of him, slow and painful and terrible.

“Just send the draft, mate. It’ll be done by tonight, you’ll see.”

.

An hour later, Louis is in actual, physical pain as he looks over Liam’s corrections, the dreaded red markings all over the pages, his cramped comments filling the margins. Seeing Jason and Chris’ names again, reading over sentences he agonized over, Louis can feel himself shrinking. He was flying before, working on Harry’s story and writing as if he would never run out of things to say. Now, he’s back on the ground, sluggish and a little defeated. Every correction he makes, every tap of his fingers against keys is underlined with a nearly constant chant of _what’s the point what’s the point what’s the point_ in his head. Here he is again, twenty-five and burnt out. Twenty-five and a hermit making a living out of writing smut while he hasn’t had sex in eight months, _good_ sex in even longer, hasn’t gone on a bloody date in at least a year. Twenty-five and halfway in love with someone so out of his reach they might as well be different species, from different planets.

He knows, somewhere deep and unreachable at the moment, that there’s nothing wrong with writing what he writes. He writes about consenting adults who always, as a rule in his stories, have a good time when they shag each other senseless. He’s not hurting anybody, quite the contrary - people are getting off on his stories, Catherine has even been thanked for helping conceive more than one baby. And as weird as hearing those things is, it’s not _bad_.

He’s making people happy, in a very specific, private way, but it still makes him feel incomplete. He can’t share what he does with anyone in his life other than Liam, he refuses to. He should be able to talk about something that occupies more than half the time in his life.

His phone buzzes, buried somewhere underneath his revised draft, and Louis spends a few seconds digging it out.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_I jst rememberd ! u promised to show me the stoyr u wrote 4 ur sisters!_

Harry’s clumsy text makes him smile, and he leans back in his chair, putting his depressing thoughts aside for the moment.

_Haven’t found it yet. Busy._

Harry’s reply comes a second later.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_Writing mine? : )_

Louis rolls his eyes, but can’t help the smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. As nervous as he is to show Harry his work, it’s nice to have someone excited to see his writing.

 _I wish_ , he writes back, _Stuck with work atm_

Harry sends back a string of sad faces and a croissant. Louis puts the phone down and goes back to work. It takes him a few pages to realize his little chat with Harry seems to have energized him a bit, and he breezes through the last of the rewrite, even managing to fix an awkward bit on a sex scene with minimal guilt.

He forwards the revised file to Liam, pushes the printed draft to the end of the table, and goes back to Harry’s story.

.

The story ends up being about ten times longer than what Louis set out to write. He types out the last sentence still unable to believe he actually had fun writing something. He’s not sure it’s any good, he’s scared to read over the entire thing, but when he closes the file for the last time, he feels like a little part of him is still in the world he created for Harry, and he’s sad to let go.

He texts Harry to tell him he’s done as soon as his laptop is shut off so that he won’t chicken out in the morning, and only looks at the time when he doesn’t get a reply right away. 3 am. Between revising his draft for Liam and finishing Harry’s, the day (and half of the night) has slipped away. Beyond the light in the kitchen, the rest of his flat is dark and quiet, but Louis is too keyed up to go to bed.

He stands and stretches before wandering over to the living room and standing in front of the bookcase. He can barely see in the gloom, but his fingers still find the book he wants. It still smells new, the jacket is smooth, the spine not even cracked. Louis takes it and brings it with him to his room.

He only opened the book once, a different one, not the one he kept. He got a parcel with ten copies in the mail to give away, and he ended up donating nine of them to the library, hanging on to one as a last second impulse. The cover is simple, the paper of the pages thin and cheap. Louis opens it, and when his eyes land on the dedication page, he almost closes it again, too embarrassed to keep going.

It was never his dream or anything like that to write a book. He fell into it, was surprised how much he loved it, and once the idea of publication was implanted in his mind, Louis was impatient, too eager. It was so obvious how much he wanted it that he was easy prey, in the end.

The simplest way to trick someone is to use something they love against them. Louis gave that line to Hunter in the second book of the series. And sure, Hunter was talking about sucking dick, but the sentiment stands. Louis’ head was completely clouded with dreams and fantasies when he called the first local publisher he found, they could probably hear it in his voice, and the little part of himself who was afraid it might not work out had kept him from telling his family, have someone else read his contract. Better not let anyone’s hopes up. He dedicated the book to his mum and never talked about it once he had it in his hands. By then, he knew he’d made a mistake.

Louis stares down at the page in front of him, the blocky _Chapter One_ , the painfully familiar first line of the first paragraph, and decides he can’t do it after all. He can barely look at the words, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stomach going through the whole thing.

What he should do is focus on work. He’s already lost enough time in pointless writing the last couple of days, he should be saving his energy for what’s putting food on his table. He regrets sending Harry the message telling him he’s done with the story, just like he knew he would. If he hadn’t sent it, he could easily claim he’s too busy to write anything not related to work. He’s sure looking at Harry’s earnest face would not make lying through his teeth difficult, not at all.

Louis drops the book on the floor by his bed and turns towards the wall. He’ll work on Hunter tomorrow, he decides. He’ll give Harry his present and then put it out of his mind for good. Maybe Harry will read his story and realize Louis is terrible, and he won’t ask about his writing again.

Somehow that thought makes something in his chest twist tighter than before, and Louis presses his face against his pillow and wishes for sleep.

He wakes up close to noon the following day to a text from Harry, sent at the usual 7 am.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_really? I cant wait to read it!_

_I’m better 2day but mum said not to go near food so im staying in agian_

It takes a moment for Louis’s eyes to focus enough to read and to realize how late it is. He’s got a foot on the floor before Harry’s message registers. He flops back down on the mattress with a groan and stares at the ceiling for a moment before lifting his mobile up over his head and clumsily typing up a response.

 _That’s too bad :(_ he sends, only dropping his phone on his face once.

He hasn’t put the phone down on the bed before it buzzes again.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_Just woke up? Lucky_

Louis has no energy left to type, so he presses call on Harry’s name on his phone and puts it on speaker.

“Are you calling just to argue that you’ve been awake since dawn?” Harry asks, humour in his voice. He doesn’t sound as stuffy as he did yesterday, and Louis nearly forgets why he actually called in the first place as he pictures Harry waking up next to him and speaking against his skin instead of the plastic of his mobile.

“Went to bed at dawn, actually,” he eventually says. “I deserve a lie in every once in a while, don’t I?”

Harry hums, not instantly agreeing like he ought to, and Louis frowns at the ceiling.

“I’ll have you know I get up just as early as you every day.”

“Not really,” Harry argues, “I live farther _and_ I’m always already in when you arrive. With tea waiting and everything.” There’s a pause. Louis can hear something sizzling in the background, can picture Harry standing at the stove, making himself lunch, hair tousled from sleep. He’s so lost in the fantasy that Harry’s next words feel like a punch in the gut. “It’s not like you _have_ to be there every morning.”

For a moment, Louis is so shocked he’s speechless. He lies there, phone so heavy on his chest it feels like a anvil. He sits up.

“Oh,” he says. “I guess I don’t.”

“ _No_! That’s not what I meant! _Fuck_ , wait.” There’s a clatter and more curses and then Louis can hear Harry closer, as if he took the speakerphone off. Louis does the same, and presses his phone to his ear. “That came out wrong, I’m not saying I don’t want you there.”

“Right.”

“Louis, I’m serious,” Harry sounds frustrated. “I just meant that you can choose when to stay in bed, you know? It’s not your _job_ to be there.”

 _It kinda is_ , Louis wants to argue. _You’re the only reason I can do my job at all_.

“It was supposed to be a joke but I’m in a bad mood and ruined it.” He sighs. “I’m sorry. I definitely, completely, absolutely want you there. It wouldn’t be the same without you. I mean, you’ve been there from the start.”

Louis is not proud of how fast his defenses go down. Damn Harry and his earnestness.

“Well,” he says, clearing his throat, “as long as you’re sure.”

“I’m more than sure, I hate being sick in general but I hate it even more ‘cause now I don’t get to see you.”

Now Louis’ face is burning.

“Bet you’ll think twice about demon-cat sitting next time.”

“Shh, he’ll hear you,” Harry hisses. “I swear he’s plotting against me, I tripped on one of his toys today and nearly died. I think he wants to eat me.”

Louis cracks up, curling forward against his knees.

“I’m serious!” Harry says, laughing. “Lou, he might be _evil_.”

“You could illustrate a book about him,” he sniggers. “ _The Baker Boy and the Evil Kitten that Wanted to Eat Him_.”

He hears Harry laugh, reluctant puffs of air against his ear.

“Only if you’ll write it for me.”

“I mean,” Louis says against his knees, “I guess I could be persuaded, s’a brilliant idea.”

Harry is quiet for a moment. Faintly, Louis can hear music coming from his end of the line.

“I’d love to draw something for you,” he says. “For one of your stories. I’ve wanted to for a long time.”

“Haz, you don’t even know-” Louis cuts himself off, frustrated. “I could be shit. I could be the worst fucking writer in England.”

 _Writer_ , he thinks. _Right_.

“I’d still want to.” Louis can picture him shrugging, smiling that half-smile that Louis has had to resist kissing off his face a million times. "And you’re not, I know you’re amazing.”

Louis can’t muster up the energy to keep arguing.

“Send me my story,” Harry goes on. “I deserve it, since I’m sick. It’ll keep me company.”

“I thought the evil cat was keep-”

“Lou.”

Louis’ chest twists with nerves.

“Now?”

“Yeah. Please.”

Oh God, he’s not ready. No one he knows has ever read his work, other than Liam, obviously, but he doesn’t count. Harry’s opinion means too much to him and it’s terrifying to think of everything that he might have accidentally revealed in the story he wrote for him. It’s so clearly _for_ Harry that Louis is afraid he’ll be exposed as the lovesick tit he knows he is.

“Alright,” Louis hears himself say. He can’t even smile at Harry’s gentle cheer, too busy trying not to freak out. Outwardly, that is, because he’s already a mess inside and he hasn’t even sent it yet. “Just. Just keep in mind that I went out of my comfort zone, okay? I haven’t written anything that’s not work in years.”

“Lou, I just want to read it, I’m not gonna, like, grade it or anything.”

 _But I want you to like it_ , Louis thinks but doesn’t say.

“Alright,” he says again. And then, “Alright, I’ll send it.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll send it and then I have to work. All day. I- I’ll turn off my phone.”

“Louis, you don’t have to be nervous.”

“I’m not-”

“You don’t have to show me if it’s too hard-”

“No,” Louis interrupts. He’s committed and he promised and he needs the story out of his hands. He wants to know what Harry thinks. “I’m sending it now.”

“Okay, Lou.”

“Right. Sending it.”

“Yeah,” Harry laughs a little.

“Talk to you tomorrow,” Louis says and hangs up before Harry can reply. He rolls himself out of bed and makes straight for his laptop, still out on the kitchen table. He doesn’t think. He types in his password, goes to his LWT folder, finds the file titled _for harry_ and attaches it to an blank email.

Then he stops, because he doesn’t know Harry’s email address. For a moment, he panics. And then his mobile buzzes on the table and it’s Harry, sending him a message with an email address and a smiley face.

Louis types the address in, hits send, and goes back to bed.

.

 

_The steps leading downstairs groan under his weight, each one a different note in the familiar tune of his morning routine. The kitchen is bathed in sunlight, the kettle rumbling on the hob and the table already set. His eyes feel gritty - all of him does - and he feels out of place in the warm room, with his grandma’s old lace curtains and the pictures of ducks on the walls. He always thought his grandfather would take them down after she was gone, he isn’t the cutesy type, but a year later everything is still there. The curtains and the pictures and the cups with ladybugs on them, the cosy that looks like a cow, the butterfly magnets on the fridge door. It makes him and the old man look out of place, the house does._

_Already he wants to go back upstairs to bed. He wants to put on a record and listen from under the covers._

_Instead he grabs the potholder shaped like a daisy and takes the kettle off the flame._

 

.

Louis has to get up, eventually. It’s not like he managed to go back to sleep, anyway - he couldn’t turn his brain off long enough to even fall into a doze. Instead, he watches the light coming through his window move across his bedroom and tries to tamp down the guilt of wasting his day away. He tries not to think of Harry reading his story. He thought he’d be relieved after it was out of his hands, but the waiting turns out to be even more nerve-wracking than the anticipation of sending it.

It’s a pointless story and he wrote it in two days. He can think of at least a dozen dirty stories he’s written in the last year better than the shit he just sent to Harry. Fuck, he’s embarrassed. It’s mortifying, the idea of Harry finding his work lacking. Regret bubbles up in his chest, and he has half a mind to call Harry and ask him to please delete the email and forget all about it.

Instead he lies bundled up in bed and watches the square patch of sunlight move from the pile of clothes on his floor to the top of the dresser, stretching and fading until the light around him turns dim. He can see the sky outside go from blinding white to stormy grey. The window panes rattle as the wind outside picks up.

He should be working.

He should be sitting up and working on Hunter. He should be downstairs at Anne’s, having tea and scones with Harry, watching Harry sketch, listening to him sing under his breath and writing.

He shouldn’t be hiding in bed and thinking of all the things that didn’t turn out how they were supposed to. Like school, and writing, and work, and Harry.

School was boring and his teachers pricks. Writing is bittersweet - he loves creating stories but he’s not creating anything he loves. Work is this embarrassing secret he keeps from everybody he cares about.  Harry is such a big part of his life but not nearly big enough.

It grows dark around him and soon his stomach is rumbling and his mouth parched. He feels a bit pathetic. He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. At least writing makes time pass without it feeling like a complete waste. At least he gets to live vicariously through his characters. He’s not much without them, really.

His thoughts are quickly getting away from him and going in a seriously depressing direction. He’s not good being by himself when he’s not writing. He sits up and rolls out of bed with an over-dramatic groan he’s actually glad no one is there to hear. He steps on something when his feet land on the floor and he looks down to see the book he dropped there the night before.

He kicks it under the bed.

.

Drinks with Liam are normally celebratory. A story sent to printing, high traffic on the website, a particularly good review - these are all reasons why Liam will call Louis up and drag him out. Instead, Louis rings Liam that night because he can’t stand himself for a second longer and trading texts with Harry is out of the question.

(Harry hasn’t texted about the story yet. Louis doesn’t know what that means.)

Liam sounds surprised when Louis calls, but is happy to go along with whatever Louis proposes. He works out of an actual office in the publishing house downtown, with proper business hours and a dress code. Louis meets him in a pub filled with men in dress shirts and loosened ties and women in skirts and heels. It’s packed, so they take their pints and stand outside, shoulders up to their ears and their breath fogging up in front of their faces.

“It’s a bit nippy, innit?” Liam says, thick eyebrows scrunched up and eyes pointed at the sky as if he’s just now realizing it’s cold as fuck out. Louis is honestly afraid his lips are going to stick to the rim of his glass as soon as he tries to take a sip. He’s- he’s in a shity mood. The pub was a long tube ride away, and even though he was going towards downtown instead of leaving it like most people during rush hour, his carriage was crowded and sticky with humidity and body heat. The streets were wet and freezing - he nearly brained himself slipping on an icy patch on the road - and his phone did not buzz at all except for when Liam texted him the pub address.

So Louis is not feeling chatty.

“I’ve got the theme for next month’s newsletter,” Liam tries, bouncing in place. Some beer spills onto his gloved hand but he doesn’t seem to mind. Louis’ woolen hat is making his head itch and his shoulder blades are digging into the brick wall he’s leaning against and he doesn’t know why he thought going out would be a good idea at all.

“Let me guess,” he sighs, giving Liam a forced smile. Poor bloke stayed behind after work for Louis and Louis hasn’t said two words to him in twenty minutes. “Ball torture.”

Liam, who of course is mid-sip when Louis speaks, sprays a projectile of misty beer right on Louis’ face. Louis doesn’t react - he deserves it, even if the tiny droplets are cold and getting even colder on his cheeks. Liam splutters apologies and, when Louis doesn’t even attempt to move, wipes his face dry with his gloves.

“Cheers,” Louis says when Liam withdraws, cheeks pink, and tries his own drink. “So, no ball torture, then?”

Liam laughs even as he looks around in case someone’s overheard.

“No, not that.”

“Mmh.”

Louis wonders if the other writers who work with Liam get excited about the themes for their newsletter. They probably do. Louis’ met some of them and they didn’t strike him as the type to be doing any kind of writing they didn’t enjoy. Some of them even got _awards_ \- they showed their actual faces and used their own names and got up on a stage and thanked their families for the support.

“Louis, are you okay?” Liam asks and now his eyes have gotten all big and concerned. “Is something wrong? How can I help?”

Louis smiles with affection for Liam. He’s a good lad, even if Louis likes to give him a hard time.

“Do you ever feel like doing something else?” he asks. When Liam’s eyebrows furrow deeper, Louis goes on, “Other than looking for euphemisms for jizz and lecturing people about how penises work, I mean.”

“As if I still need to check for euphemisms,” Liam says, flushing down his neck, and Louis laughs.

“Naughty Liam.”

“You know, some of the others…they get creative,” Liam whispers, crowding closer.

“Oh no.”

Liam nods, “I’ve read some scary stuff.”

“Well, give us your worst, come on,” Louis goads, some cheer returning to him. He has to hold in his laughter when Liam’s eyes get even wider.

“Er, well, I’ve read, um, meat stick.”

Louis cackles, beer sloshing out of his glass and onto the pavement.

“Bat and balls. Pocket rocket. Chorizo. One called it Kyle the whole time.”

Louis is wheezing, head thrown back as he laughs so hard his belly aches. Liam just sounds so awkward and he’s saying such rubbish and Jesus Christ, _Kyle?_

“I thought I was reading a threesome until the guy shoved Kyle up someone’s bum.”

Louis clutches at his stomach, laughter echoing down the alley. Even Liam can’t seem to help but giggle against his glass.

“Are those published?” Louis manages to ask.

“Oh, yeah, they sell quite well.”

“Wow.”

They fall quiet again, both smiling, and Louis feels a little lighter. There are more people around them, despite it being the middle of the week and getting late. A group of women have formed a circle behind Liam and Louis predicts a spilt drink soon.

“You never answered my question,” Louis says. “Don’t you wish you worked doing something else?”

Liam shrugs.

“S’just my day job.”

“You still write?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s hard to give it up, you know.”

Louis knows.

“Who reads it?”

“The short stories get published sometimes. And my girlfriend. She’s the best critic.”

There’s a twinge in Louis’ chest, something like jealousy that he’s quick to tamp down. He imagines for a moment being that close to someone again. He hasn’t been in a relationship in a long time. His thoughts naturally shift to Harry and the photo of his bedroom window he sent Louis. He imagines them together under the covers, warm even though it’s freezing outside. He imagines turning his laptop Harry’s way and asking him what he thinks of something Louis wrote, Harry handing Louis his sketchbook in return. That small act feels even more intimate than the idea of them naked under the blankets.

When he comes back to himself, Liam is staring at him.

“I’m so fucking single,” Louis says, immediately taking a swig of his beer and carelessly dipping his nose in the foam. Lonely, is what he means. He’s so fucking lonely.

Liam’s eyebrows have scrunched up even further, his eyes going round and glassy in sympathy and now Louis feels even more pathetic.

“Louis-”

“And I hate my job.” He’s already started, he might as well finish humiliating himself. At least Liam’s too nice to mock him for whining. “It all feels so pointless, I mean, the only reason I remember what shagging looks like ’s because I write about it every day. My family lives far away and I’ve drifted away from all my friends and I, I fancy this guy, right? And he’s, he’s the sweetest guy and he’s so fit and we get along like crazy but I can’t even tell him what I do for a living ‘cause he’d think it’s weird. And it _is_. It’s so bloody _weird_. But sometimes I like it. I like writing Hunter but he’d- he’d know- you know that story, the last one, he’s the reason I managed to finish it. He’s like, being with him is like-”

Louis can’t put it into words without using Liam’s word. _Muse_. But muses are supposed to inspire art, not cheap porn. Harry should inspire beautiful poems and songs and paintings. Instead Louis looks at him and writes about people painting each other with come.

He’s disgusting.

“Lou,” Liam says, and there’s a hand on Louis’ shoulder, “I can’t, I mean I don’t know what to say about most of that. I’m sorry you feel like that but _I’m_ your friend, mate. I’m here for you. And you can always visit your family and you can go and ask this bloke you fancy out on a date. You’re nice and you’re fit, you’re a catch!”

Louis groans, letting his head hit the brick behind him.

“You sound like my mum,” he whines, cheeks burning.

“And I get being scared of talking about what we do. But, like, is it really that weird? We have so many readers and some of the stuff I edit is great. Better than some of the rubbish I used to read when I worked at bigger places, you know. Your stuff is my favourite. It’s not, well, I mean, it _is_ porn but it doesn’t feel like it. There’s more to your writing than that. You’re good, I promise.”

Louis stares up at the old-fashioned lantern above the pub entrance and sighs.

“You never know,” Liam says, squeezing Louis’ shoulder. “Your guy could be a reader.”

It makes Louis smile. He pictures Harry, with his cartoon eyes and dimpled cheeks, with his pink jumpers and curls that probably smell like vanilla. Harry who likes crime novels and wants to illustrate children books for a living, reading Louis’ filthy, filthy stories.

It makes something in his belly stir and he remembers, against his will, that Harry named his sister’s cat _Lorenzo_. But that’s a coincidence. Has to be.

“I like to think he has better taste,” he eventually says. Liam shoves him playfully, his eyebrows finally relaxing and his eyes squinting shut with his smile.

“We’ve got the most tasteful writers in the business,” he says and takes a sip of his drink.

“Tell that to mister meat stick,” Louis mutters and gets another spray of beer in the face in reply.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit short, but the next one is twice as long :) Posting time depends on my beautiful beta, though!

Louis wakes up at seven the following morning to a text from Harry.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_Back at wrk ! Theres muffins if u get here before openifg time_

Louis smiles to himself, already rolling out of bed when a thought comes to him. He rolls straight into his bedside table and sends a lamp and his glasses clattering to the floor.

Harry texted him and he didn’t mention the story at all. He hated it. Of course he did. Louis embarrassed himself and now they are supposed to pretend nothing happened and move on from it. Louis hoped- he knew the story wasn’t good but he hoped Harry would like it anyway.

He sits on the floor and stares at Harry’s text. It takes a moment before he can type a reply.

_Sure. I’ll be down in 10._

He hesitates before sending it, but he hasn’t seen Harry in three days and he misses him, as sad as that is. He hits send and he’s not even on his feet before his phone buzzes:

**H (teacup emoji):**

_:) :) :))_

Fuck, Louis should stop finding everything about Harry endearing. He brushes his teeth, finds clean clothes to change into, grabs his coat and laptop, and slips out of the flat.

Icy wind hits Louis’ face as soon as he steps onto the street. He can see Anne’s from his stoop, warm light glowing through the windows. Just looking at it makes him forget the cold. He’s making his way over when the door opens, and there is Harry in a green apron and his hair up in a tiny ponytail. Louis can feel himself smile, clutching his laptop to his chest, feet scuffling on the pavement. When he’s almost at the door, Harry doesn’t move away. Instead he seems to be moving outside. He’s moving, closer and closer to Louis, and Louis opens his mouth to ask what’s going on but his voice gets muffled by Harry’s shoulder. Suddenly he’s warm, so warm, snug tight in Harry’s arms, and he doesn’t know what’s happening but he’s not about to complain.

Harry hugs him, squeezes him tight enough to lift Louis off his feet and for his laptop to creak between them. He smells like the inside of the bakery and Louis can feel him breathing.

“Harry?” he chances to ask. Maybe something happened. “You okay?”

Harry nods, his chin digging into Louis’ shoulder, and squeezes him once again before letting go. Louis stumbles at the loss of support, and Harry steadies him. When Louis looks up at him, he’s got a serious look on his face, lower lip sucked into his mouth.

“What’s wrong?” Louis asks. “Has something happened?”

Harry shakes his head, the corners of his mouth turning up. Without saying a word, he tugs on Louis’ sleeve and pulls him into the shop. The door closes with a thump and the familiar clinking of the little bell. It’s warm, the oven still on in the back, and Louis’ usual table is set up. There’s a pot of tea and two cups, yellow with small purple flowers on them, a little pitcher of milk, and a plate with a big muffin on it.

It’s nothing unusual, but it feels different somehow. He can’t remember Harry ever waiting for him like this, a silent hug at the door, the table set for two.

Louis feels nervous all of a sudden. Is this Harry’s way of apologising for hating his story? He wouldn’t put it past him, although Louis had always pictured Harry as the type to find something to compliment about anything. Maybe the story was _that_ bad. So bad that even Harry can’t find a single nice thing to say about it.

“Um,” Louis starts, “what’s going on?”

“I baked your favourite,” Harry says. “Blueberry muffins, except it’s frozen blueberries cause they’re hard to find in winter. Um.”

“That’s okay,” Louis says, because Harry looks nervous, fiddling with his apron. “Thank you, Haz.”

“No, I, I wanted to thank _you_.”

“What?”

“For my birthday present,” Harry says, and Louis feels his stomach drop.

“Oh. Oh, it was a bit crap, wasn’t it?” He walks ahead, past Harry and towards his table. There’s no room for his laptop, so he sets it on the counter instead, and takes his jacket off. His hands are shaking and he feels like an idiot for it. “I told you so.”

“Told me what? Lou, I loved it, it wasn’t crap at all.”

It catches Louis by surprise and he freezes, body half out of his jacket. He looks over at Harry, who is left standing in the middle of the shop, cheeks pink and eyes sparkling.

“You liked it?”

“I _loved_ it, Lou. I read it three times. I cried.”

“Cried? It wasn’t anything sad.”

Harry shrugs, talking a step closer. “There was something about it.”

Louis knows what he means, he put that something there, but he was sure that he would be the only one to pick up on it. Apparently Harry did, too, and it makes him proud. Something feels like it’s bursting in his chest, and he smiles, grins big enough that his cheeks ache with it. It makes Harry smile even wider, finally coming to stand across the small table.

“I didn’t want it to end, it was...it felt like a beginning.”

That’s what Louis thought when he finished it. Like there is more to be told. More about the boy, more about the old man. More about the town and its people. Harry’s story is like a tiny glimpse of everything Louis knows is somewhere in his own head, waiting to be put into actual words.

“I want to ask you about everything,” Harry says, gripping the chair on his side of the table. “Is that okay? Can we talk about it? You’re so good, Lou. I _knew_ it.”

Louis feels tears burning in his eyes and he blinks them away. That’s embarrassing. One mediocre story doesn’t erase the piles of absolute shit he’s written over the years that he can never show Harry, but it still feels wonderful to hear. _You’re so good, Lou._ Louis wants to record the words, Harry’s voice deep and honest, and listen to them every morning and every night.

“Can we?” Harry asks again.

“Um, sure, yeah, ‘course, Haz.”

They sit and Harry pours them tea and urges Louis to try the muffin. It’s amazing, of course, and Louis groans at the taste, over the top enough to make Harry blush.

“Stop it,” he says, hiding his mouth behind his cup. “Today is about you, not cakes.”

“It’s always about cakes, Harry, especially when they’re yours and they’re not cakes, they’re masterpieces.”

Harry rolls his eyes and Louis winks at him, feeling a little more like himself, drinking Harry’s tea and staring at his pretty face.

“I’m so embarrassed I ever showed you my drawings,” Harry says quietly after a moment. Louis scowls and gulps down a mouthful of tea.

“What?”

“It seems silly I was proud of them when you wrote _that_ in like, a day.”

“Haz, are you joking? Your art is gorgeous,” Louis tells him. He looks up at the frames on the walls. They show Harry’s growth so clearly - the most honest ones from before he started school, bright and a little messy and unpracticed, followed by the precise, more professional-looking pieces that Louis knows were end of year submissions for some of his classes. There’s a little row of photographs aligned along the door from a photography elective Harry took last year - all pastry and tea related, of course - that’s colourful and vibrant when Louis knows most of Harry’s classmates went for a more dramatic black and white. The entire shop has always felt as if taken straight out of one of Harry’s paintings (the pretty watercolour ones that hang over the windows) and it’s Louis’ favourite place in the world. Not silly at all. “You said you wanted to illustrate one of my stories, didn’t you? I want that, too.”

“I couldn’t do it justice,” Harry argues, shaking his head. He probably thinks he’s complimenting Louis but Louis is having none of it.

“Harry, I only wrote it because of you. You’re all over it, you’re the reason I ever manage to write more than two words at a time. Don’t put yourself down to flatter someone else, please.”

Harry looks at him and Louis stares back. Slowly, he sees a softer smile curve Harry’s mouth up, nose scrunching before he looks down at his tea.

“I did actually draw something for it.”

Louis blinks. “You did? Show me.”

“Nope, not yet.”

Louis throws his hands up with a squawk. It makes Harry laugh and the strange fog that seemed to cover them a moment before lifts. Harry is Harry again, lovely Harry with his weird hyena laugh and crinkly eyes, instead of the younger, more insecure version of a second ago.

“What d’ya mean ‘not yet’? May I remind you I was forced to churn out nearly forty pages in a _day_ for you? I think I deserve this.”

“Well, I don’t have it with me,” Harry says. “It’s at home.”

“Well, you can bring it over tomorrow,” Louis concedes, quite generously.

“Or,” Harry clears his throat. “Or you could come see it.”

Louis stills.

“Oh?”

“It’s a big canvas, and I don’t live far,” Harry explains, and when Louis doesn’t speak, adds, a little frantic, “I can take a photo, you’re right, I’ll-”

“No, I want to come see it.”

The words are out in a hurry - he can’t let Harry finish his sentence.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, definitely want to see it in person.”

When Harry smiles, Louis’ heartbeat doubles in speed, but that’s nothing new.

Niall arrives an hour later, just in time to greet the rush of sleepy customers who always show up around nine. Harry stops his gushing and the endless stream of questions he’s been throwing at Louis to go back behind the counter, but not before he brings Louis a fresh pot of tea. Louis sits, fingers on the keyboard and Hunter’s latest story open. He doesn’t write more than a few hundred words all day, head lost somewhere between fiction and the very real imminence of Harry’s clock-out time.

.

 

_Hunter crouched under the tarp and held his side. Blood slicked his jacket, warm and sliding down to his hip and the small of his back. His fingers were red and shiny with it, but he didn’t feel any pain. His earpiece was still dead, spitting static at intervals, but he didn’t dare take it out. The compound was alive with noise and movement - spotlights on and shining down on the grounds, shouts echoing down alleys, footsteps stomping on the undergrowth around him._

_There were more tarps spread over all around the territory, different meeting points in case it all went to shit, and he had been hoping to find a friendly face already waiting for him under this one. He’d apparently chosen wrong._

_He reached around his back for his bag and the emergency kit he kept there. He was sure he had something to tape his wound closed with. The movement made him wince as the torn skin of his side stretched, fresh blood splattering the floor in fat drops. His bag was empty. Whoever had driven a knife through him had managed to slash the bottom of his pack open and most of the contents had spilled out. Blinking sweat out of his eyes, Hunter strained his ears for footsteps that sounded too close, for voices heading his way._

_All he could hear were leaves rustling and his own laboured breathing. In his pocket, the sim cards he’d swiped from the lab were pressing against the very top of his thigh, right against the spot where his mark had sucked a bruise into not an hour before. He could still hear Barrett’s voice in his ear, droning on and on about escape routes while Hunter had been trying to do his_ job _, moaning loud enough to drown him out only for Barrett to raise his voice so high Hunter almost thought the mark could hear him._

_He was an absolute twat, but later, when Hunter’d had to incapacitate the mark and bolt, he’d known the way out even if his earpiece was useless and silent._

_The sim cards were safe - at least something had gone well._

_Breathing through gritted teeth, Hunter pressed his forehead against his knees and held his bleeding side. He was on the wrong side of the compound, alone and incommunicado. He was losing blood at an alarming rate and now he was sure sure there was a trail of tools and medical equipment left on the ground and leading to his hiding place._

_He needed to move._

_Just then, a twig snapped. Hunter tensed, muscles locked, ready to spring to his feet. He stayed still, half-hidden under the tarp, the hand not holding his side buried in the damp soil by his feet._

_A footstep, and the crack of another twig. Hunter stopped breathing. His earpiece spluttered another cackle of static and without his holster or any sort of weapon on him, Hunter felt more naked and exposed crouching on the ground fully clothed than he had on his hands and knees, strange hands on his bare hips, trying to ignore Barrett’s voice telling him how he had to turn left on the corridor and go through the second door on the right._

_Fucking Barrett’s was going to be the last familiar voice Hunter heard before he died. Wonderful._

 

_._

At two o’clock, Harry hangs up his apron, fluffles up his curls, and smiles at Louis from behind the counter. There’s a ball of lead in Louis’ stomach, and his palms are damp with nerves, but he’s also so eager it must show on his face. His laptop is shut down and on his lap as he waits, knee bouncing. The shop is empty again after the last couple of customers left with their pink to-go cups. Music is playing quietly and Harry laughs at something Niall says, making Louis’ eyes snap back to them. He watches Harry slip on his coat, a thick hat hiding his curls again and a scarf snug around his neck. It’s drizzling outside and the glass on every window has fogged up with condensation.

The promise of going to Harry’s, of seeing where he lives, of...something, is making Louis anxious to leave. Something maybe happening. Of seeing the artwork that his story inspired and maybe stop being ridiculous and asking Harry if it’s okay to kiss him.

“Ready to go?” Harry asks, suddenly standing by Louis’ table. Louis looks up at him, at the way he’s fiddling with his scarf as if he’s nervous too, and wants to ask to kiss him right now.

“Ready,” he says and stands up. He catches Niall’s eye and nods goodbye, getting a wink in return. Before he can think too hard about it, Harry is leading the way to the exit. A strong gust of wind nearly rips the door from Harry’s hand and pricks at Louis’ cheeks.

“Fuck, okay,” Harry says to himself and looks over his shoulder at Louis. “Such a nice day, yeah?”

Louis rolls his eyes even as he smiles, helpless.

“You want to drop your computer off at your place? It’s raining a bit.”

Before Louis knows it, they’re going into his building. Harry follows him to the lift, both too quiet, Louis’ head stuck on the fact that Harry is taking him home when a few hours ago he was positive he had embarrassed himself beyond repair. The lift whines as usual as it lurches into motion, causing Harry to bump into Louis’ shoulder. Neither of them move away, arms pressed together in the small space, and Louis’ brain is too full.

He fumbles with his key as he unlocks the door, the cord of his charger unraveling and dangling from the crook of his arm as he pushes up and out with his hip to get the door open. It’s as cold inside as it was down in the lobby and just as quiet. Louis walks into the flat and goes straight to the kitchen to dump his laptop on the table. He only realizes that Harry’s followed inside when he turns to go and bumps into him.

Louis stumbles, and Harry’s balance is not the best even when he’s not being shoved, so they have to grab at each other, Harry’s hands clutching at Louis’ forearms and Louis’ fingers curling on Harry’s hips inside his coat.

“Hello,” Harry says softly once they’ve regained their footing. He’s smiling a little, and Louis’ heart feels like it’s about to beat out of his chest. “This is the first time I’ve seen you outside of work.”

“Oh,” Louis says, thrown. “Yeah, you’re right.”

It is. It’s the first time Louis has seen Harry away from Anne’s. Not only that, but Harry’s in Louis’ kitchen, surrounded by Louis’ things. Touching Louis. He was so worried about him going over to Harry’s that he didn’t even think about Harry being in _his_ space.

Harry is still wearing his coat and his hat and his cheeks are a dark pink. He still smells like the inside of a cookie tin.

“Sorry about the mess,” Louis says.

He’s not even sure what state he left the flat in earlier, but he knows there’s a least two old mugs sitting in the sink and he still hasn’t put away his laundry. Harry shrugs, eyes going back and forth between Louis’ before they dip down to Louis’ mouth and...okay. They’ve gone past the appropriate time to hold on to each other after their little crash. Louis could vibrate out of his skin he’s so hyped up, and he realises he’s been squeezing Harry’s hips, thumbs digging in.

It doesn’t seem like it bothers Harry.

“You really liked that story?” Louis whispers, and he watches Harry’s mouth, his tongue darting out to lick his lips, his dimple popping into existence with the smallest twitch of his face.

“No, I really like _you_.” Harry’s cheeks go even redder. “I mean, I love the story, of course. But I still would’ve liked you even if it’d been terrible.”

Maybe it’s that Harry is so clearly nervous, fingers shaking where they are curled around Louis’ arms, or maybe it’s that he’d have to be the stupidest man alive not to take a chance so neatly laid out in front of him - either way, Louis steels himself and looks up at Harry’s eyes, braver than he has been in a long time.

“I really like you, too,” he says, feeling all of ten years old (which is coincidentally the age Louis remembers being the boldest, most unafraid version of himself, so it sort of fits).

Harry bites down on a smile that would have probably blinded Louis if it had been set loose, his grip tightening on Louis’ forearms before he slides his hands up to Louis’ shoulders.

“Yeah? You like me?” Harry asks and Louis swears his eyes are twinkling. He narrows his own, pinching at the soft flesh between his fingertips.

“I said it, didn’t I? Are you gonna need to hear it every five minutes now?”

Harry laughs, batting at Louis’s hands and squirming in Louis’ easy hold. Louis feels like he’s going to float right off the ground.

“Of course I like you,” he says as he smooths his hands up Harry's sides. “Have you met you?”

“Have you met _you_?” Harry replies on a laugh.

“What about me?”

Harry stares at him. For a moment he looks like he’s going to start teasing Louis back, but then his gaze turns soft and he slides his hands to the sides of Louis’ neck, thumbs brushing Louis’ jaw, making him shiver at the touch.

“I really like you,” Harry says again and Louis smiles, gaze shifting to a point over Harry’s shoulder because suddenly he can’t bear to look into his eyes.

“I think we’ve established that.”

Harry’s hands move back to Louis’ shoulders, down his arms. He stops at Louis’ elbows for a moment before moving on to his wrists. Louis looks down when Harry’s fingers slide into his, and sees Harry’s hands (big and still slightly tanned from his vacation) cradling his. He still has trouble believing this is really happening, even as he’s looking at it, as he’s feeling Harry’s warm palms.

“Lou,” Harry says.

Louis looks up again. Harry’s eyes are big and earnest and there’s determination there, something that Louis can’t seem to feel himself these days. He’s glad one of them has a little fire inside, at least.

Then there’s a flash of light and thunder cracks outside. Harry jumps with a little scream. Louis laughs at him, of course, and Harry grumbles in embarrassment.

“Your poor nerves,” Louis coos as he rubs his thumb across the back of Harry’s hand. “Your poor, poor old lady nerves.”

“Shut up,” Harry says with a pout that’s so obviously fake Louis has to laugh again. He _knows_ how much Harry likes to be teased - he can see the smile threatening to split his face in half.

When thunder cracks again, Harry yelps and Louis cackles, jostling Harry’s shoulder and getting shoved in return.

“I’ve got sensitive ears,” Harry tells him with a sniff and Louis looks, but Harry’s ears are covered by his hat. Without thinking, he reaches out and moves the fabric aside, pushing the rim of the hat just back enough so that Harry’s ears poke out.

“But they’re so tiny,” he says, fingers tangling on stray curls. “How can you even hear anything?”

Harry groans, “I thought you liked me!”

And fuck, Louis does. Harry makes him forget what a lost cause he really is, with his tea and cakes and smiles. Louis feels as if he’s stepped into another world every time he goes into Anne’s. Even having Harry in his flat hasn’t broken the illusion, and Louis is happy to pretend that life outside of this bubble doesn’t exist.

Except it sounds like it’s raining. Louis sees Harry looking behind him at the window, and then turning back towards Louis with a frown on his face.

“It’s storming,” he announces, his deep voice making it sound like he’s just delivered terrible news. “Maybe we shouldn't go to my place today.”

The floor shifts a little beneath Louis’ feet, and he finally lets go of Harry’s hands.

“Whatever you want, Haz,” he says. If Louis was a character in one of his stories, he and Harry would be naked already. They would have gotten each other off against the door before moving inside. They would have defiled his kitchen table by now, or maybe the sofa.

Instead, they’re still wearing more layers than anyone should be wearing inside. Instead, Louis held Harry’s hands and touched his odd little ears and now he’s apparently uninvited from going to Harry’s place.

It was probably the ear-touching that did it.

“I have a class later,” Harry says, his eyes boring into the side of Louis’ face.

“Okay, I can let you out.” Louis goes to walk past him, something hollow settling in his chest, when Harry stops him with a careful hand on his shoulder.

“I could make tea,” he says. “You’re not gonna send me out in the rain, are you? I’m still recovering from my sister’s cat trying to murder me, remember?”

“Right,” Louis says slowly. “Lorenzo.”

He’s almost sure Harry’s cheeks go even pinker at the name but he tries not to read too much into it.

“Unless you have work?”

Louis shakes himself.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Harry? I do my best work with you around.”

.

Louis gets absolutely no work done that afternoon.

Harry making tea means Harry prying inside every drawer and cabinet in Louis’ kitchen, which leads to a tour of the flat, which ends in Harry pulling books out of Louis’ bookcase and asking, “Did you write this one?” and Louis answering, “Yes, Harry, I was Ursula Le Guin this whole time. Fooled you, didn’t I,” or variations of it.

Harry laughs every time, biting his lip before choosing another book. Louis is glad he doesn’t keep any physical copies of his Austin (or Catherine Darling) books at his place. He feels a little stab of panic when Harry’s hand drifts closer to the far left shelf, but then remembers kicking _that_ particular book under his bed that morning and he relaxes.

“I knew you’d have a good selection,” Harry says as he slides out a copy of _Clifford’s First School Day_ that Ernest left behind the last time his family visited. “Though I’m partial to _Clifford’s Good Deeds_ myself.”

“Of course you are,” Louis says, rolling his eyes. “Though I didn’t picture you as a Clifford fan. Your art’s not very Cliffordy.”

“I can still enjoy Clifford even if I’ll never be able to recreate the complex art style,” Harry argues good naturedly, smiling as he looks over Louis’ shelves.

“Never? Sounds to me you’re not trying hard enough.”

“Is that _Coraline_?”

They stand side by side, talking about magic and secret doors and a frankly terrifying art style until they finish their tea and Harry offers to make more. Louis would feel guilty about Harry practically serving him when he’s the guest, but Harry looks so honestly delighted to be snooping around Louis’ things that Louis doesn’t stop him.

Eventually, they drift to the sofa, and Louis dusts off the remote wedged between the cushions and puts Netflix on the TV he often forgets he owns.

It takes him three tries to remember his password.

Harry puts on a movie he’s clearly seen a hundred times and then cuddles back on the sofa, half-curled over Louis’ side, bare feet under his bum. Five minutes into the film, he drops his head on Louis’ shoulder.

Louis is not sure how they ended up here.

When he finally dares to put his hand over Harry’s, he doesn’t have to wait long for Harry to intertwine their fingers and squeeze. Louis has to keep reminding himself that Harry said he likes him ( _really_ likes him) and that he touched Louis’ face and stared at his mouth.

(He also has to shut off the little voice telling him that Harry didn’t kiss him and probably never will if he hasn’t taken the chance by now.)

(The other little voice telling him _he_ could kiss Harry instead sounds a lot like Liam.)

At six, Harry has to leave for his class. Louis walks him downstairs and they both linger and fidget and smile down at their feet.

“Lou,” Harry says when he’s already out the door, nose already going red from the cold. “Are you coming to my birthday party?”

If Louis didn’t feel ten before…

“Are you inviting me?”

“It’s at my place. On Saturday.”

“Alright, your place. Saturday.”

They stare at each other. Behind Harry, the sky is already dark, still cloudy and miserable. Louis feels like he’s glowing from the inside out.

“I’ll still see you tomorrow,” Louis says. Saturday is still three days away.

“Yeah.”

Harry sways on his feet, back and forth, almost like he’s gearing up to lean in and-

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Lou,” he says and, with a wave, walks down the street to the tube.

If Louis were a character in one of his stories, he would have come at least twice in the last few hours. Instead, he watched half a film holding Harry’s hand and resting their heads together and listening to Harry giggle at whatever was happening on the screen.

Louis has never felt happier that he’s flesh and blood instead.

.

 

_Blood seeped through his fingers, his thighs shaking as he crouched in place and waited to be found out. He could feel consciousness leaving him in starts, his vision starting to swim, his eyes drooping. Maybe passing out would be better._

_Nothing happened for a long time._

_Hunter knew he was still breathing, because he could hear every exhale. He knew he was awake, because everything thobbed. But when he tried to move, his body didn’t listen. His knees were locked and his shoulders were set and his hand was stuck to his side._

_When something moved outside the tarp, Hunter could only follow it with his eyes. There were feet walking outside, boots with dark trousers tucked into them._

_When the tarp moved over his head, Hunter sharply inhaled, but remained still. He saw the trousers were covering a pair of legs, and the legs ended in a waist with a belt around it, a gun holster on one side. Empty._

_Hunter closed his eyes as the tarp fell away, and when he opened them, fucking Barrett was there._

_Maybe he was asleep after all._

 

.

The high of his afternoon with Harry stays with him through the night, through one if Liam’s update calls the next day, through a bout of writing that makes him break the five-digit word count on his latest Hunter draft, and through a text exchange with his sisters about the pros and cons of boys in general.

At Anne’s, it’s like nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. Louis goes in early in the morning and he and Harry talk, as always. They work, as always. Harry smiles and sneaks him pastries and Louis flirts with the old ladies that always come in mid-morning for scones and gossip.

Sometimes, when Louis is lost writing and Harry is working the counter, his phone will buzz. When he checks it later, Harry’s sent him photos of Louis glaring at his laptop with silly captions typed on them.

It’s nothing new, except now Louis knows Harry _likes_ him. Harry likes him enough to hold his hand and be quiet together and trace shapes on his palm with his fingers without even looking away from his film.

Louis writes about people shagging twenty minutes after they’ve met. He writes about blowjobs in dirty alleys and about secret agents who specialize in honeypot missions and like to boast about it. About dumb, fake-Italian blokes with big cocks and little brains who go about life fucking women in barns, and in deserted islands, and on a tree, once.

But nothing Louis writes makes him feel as weightless as sitting on his sofa with Harry’s head on his shoulder did. And as much as Louis wants to kiss Harry, and touch him, and take him apart like a character in one of his stories, he wouldn’t trade the feeling he gets low in his belly every time he catches Harry looking at him - anticipation and giddiness all rolled into a compressed ball of warmth - for any kind of sex he’s ever written.

Harry feels real in a way that’s almost unfamiliar to Louis now. He used to be different. He used to be more outgoing, and he used to get crushes on people all the time, he used to have friends around him constantly, back when he wasn’t ashamed of how he spent most of his days.

Now he has Liam and his laptop and Harry, and out of the three of them, Harry is the only one he’s still hiding from. Hiding even though every time Harry stares at him, Louis feels laid completely bare for him to see.

.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_U think the boy ever went thru the photo album?_

That’s the text that wakes Louis up on Saturday at seven in the morning. Harry has the day off, it being his birthday eve and all.

_Contxt pls,_ he sends back, still half-asleep and squinting against the glare of his phone screen.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_from my story_

_His nan’s photo album_

Louis blinks at the words. He checks the time again (it’s still just after seven in the morning) and then looks at the words again.

_Are you working today?_

**H (teacup emoji):**

_Noo it’s my almost birthday remmber ?_

Louis smiles.

_Why on earth are u awake?_ he sends and then drops his phone on the bed and stretches. It’s chilly in the room, and he burrows back under the covers, bringing his mobile with him. When the next text comes through, he reads it under the heavy weight of four blankets and the throw Lottie gave him to keep over the sofa.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_Habit ;)_

_Also the letter_

Louis is about to send about thirty question marks when Harry elaborates.

_he read the letter but i dont know wht it said_

_And_

Louis sees Harry is typing and waits. By the time his bladder starts to scream at him, no text has been sent. He leaves his mobile sitting on his pillow while he sprints to the loo, and then he’s already there, so he cleans his teeth and showers, using up all the hot water and coming out wrinkly and a little dizzy. He shivers stepping out of the bathroom. Without the promise of a proper tea down at Anne’s, he throws on some clothes, makes himself a cuppa and finds some biscuits leftover from last week’s shopping.

His laptop is on the kitchen table as usual. When she visits, his mum always wonders why Louis bothered to find a flat with an office if he’s always working in the kitchen. Louis always argues that, since he lives by himself, everywhere is his office. It usually leads to conversations about Louis’ love life and his mum suggesting he get a dog so he won’t be so lonely.

Thinking that he ought to ring his mum soon, Louis sits at the table with his tea and his biscuits and wakes his laptop up.

The photo album, Harry said. The letter.

His latest Hunter story is still open, the cursor blinking mid-sentence where Louis stopped the night before:

 

_Barrett pushed at his shoulder until Hunter gave in and laid across the seats, getting blood and mud all over the upholstery. Marv was going to stab him again - if both of them were still alive after the clusterfuck of a mission was over. The old bloke loved his van more than he did any of the people who usually rode in it._

_Grey was creeping into his vision, and he concentrated on not passing out while Barrett dug around in the back for...something. It was cold, or maybe he had lost too much blood, and sounds were somewhat muffled. He was going to die and the last person he had fucked had been a sixty-eight-year-old international drug lord with bad breath and overly-moisturized hands._

_At least Barrett was there. Barrett was okay, when he was quiet. He always appeared in the nick of time, too - always had an extra clip or a fresh water bottle or dry socks when someone needed them. He was alright._

_Speaking of, Barrett popped back into Hunter’s line of sight with a scowl that looked almost worried. Hunter was touched, and also starting to drift away in a fog._

_“They hurt me,” he explained, just in case. “M’bleeding. Here.”_

_He pointed at his side, except he didn’t move at all. That was odd._

_“You are,” Barrett said, in that rough voice of his, as if talking was his least favourite thing and Hunter was forcing him to. “I’m_

 

Louis knows that his draft is turning out to be a little more action-packed and a little less sexy than usual. So far, he’s glazed over the sex scenes, left nothing but references and allusions. Hunter’s stories are usually fast-paced and heavy on the nudity, with a side of half-assed mystery and quickly-resolved conflict. They’re fun and easy to read and if Louis had to choose a favourite sex scene of his, it would be the one with Hunter and that art thief are in that terrace in book two.

This draft is not really shaping up to be what the publisher is expecting, and every line he writes feels like its leading to a conclusion. Like he’s saving all the dirty bits for when Hunter and Barrett finally bite the bullet and get together.

He closes the file without finishing the sentence and goes to his LWT folder. He hovers over Harry’s file before clicking on it, and then everything fades away for a few hours while he figures out what happened to the letter and the photo album.

.

When he reemerges, noon has come and gone and his stomach is growling. Nothing remains of his biscuits but crumbs on the table and his tea has gone cold a long time ago. Louis saves his work and stands, stretching and wincing when something pulls in his back. It’s rare that he gets to write uninterrupted long enough for his back to start aching, and he realizes the reason why when he goes to check his phone and it’s not there.

It’s on his pillow, where he left it that morning, and he has twenty unread messages waiting for him. Six are from Harry.

**H (teacup emoji):**

_And i was thinkng u could keep writing about it if u wanted_

_Because theres a lot left to find ou t_

_No pressure ! Only if u want to i still love it as it is_

_Lou?_

_Are you angry? You don’t have to write anything else, I was just thinking about it and_

_Ignore that. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. Please come over tonight don’t be angry with me!_

All the messages are from that morning, and just as Louis is reading, another one comes through: Harry’s address followed by a cake and a heart emoji. Louis’ own heart thumps against the back of his throat at the sight of the latter.

_I’m not angry, you dolt,_ he types, _I was working. Forgot my phone.._

_Niall said u werent at the shop,_ comes Harry’s reply five seconds later, _r u cheating on us ??_

Louis smiles to himself. He wants to tease, wants to goad Harry into a fake strop at the thought of Louis trying someone else’s tea, someone else’s cakes. He also wants to make a big declaration, reassure Harry that no, Louis hasn’t sat at another coffee shop in years, that it wouldn’t feel right, that no other would even come close to Harry’s.

He settles for something in the middle, and sends Harry a short _Never_.

He has to talk himself out of adding a heart at the end.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there, guys. Thank you, E!!

Getting ready for Harry’s party, Louis tries to keep his mind blank. He finds a pair of loose-fitting light blue jeans he hasn’t worn in ages, not baggy or too wrinkled. He spends too long finding a nice jumper, and then a t-shirt that he won’t swim in - just in case it’s warm at Harry’s and he needs to lose layers. He trims his beard as carefully as he can and then showers for a second time that day. Later, he stands naked in front of the mirror and tries to keep his focus on his face and his hair. There’s nothing below his neck that he can fix in less than an hour anyway. 

He’s jittery by the time he’s ready, glasses off and contacts in, checking his phone every thirty seconds and half-expecting to find a text from Harry cancelling the whole thing. At eight, an hour before he’s expected at the party, he caves and texts Liam,  _ He’s having a birthday party today.. _

Liam’s reply comes two minutes later:  _ Ur going? Good luck! Rmember you’re worth it! Go get him!  _ There’s a couple of flexing bicep emojis thrown in for emphasis.

Louis huffs, embarrassed and touched and still nervous enough to vomit, and types:  _ thanks, you’re ridiculous. _

When he finally leaves his flat, he’s exhausted himself. It’s freezing, of course, and he curses under his breath when he has to slide the hood of his jacket over his carefully styled hair before his ears fall off. He’s wearing trainers and his toes are already going numb, his breath fogging in front of his face as he sighs. At least it’s not raining. 

Harry lives less than ten minutes away, and Louis covers the distance with his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders pulled up against the wind. He’s a block away when he starts seeing other people on the street, a couple of groups that all seem to be heading the same way as him. 

Of course it’s going to be packed, Louis thinks. Harry seems like the type to invite as many people as possible - the more the merrier, everyone is a friend, no matter how well or how little he knows them. Louis is not really sure where he falls in those categories. Harry might be the only person he has met who enjoys working a counter just for the chance to meet and talk to as many people as he can. Sure, there are arseholes - Louis has witnessed Harry going from friendly to hostile in a split second when faced with someone rude - but the occasional bad apple doesn’t seem to ever dampen Harry’s spirit.

Only one group turns towards Harry’s street, though, and Louis follows a safe distance away, nerves knotting in his belly. Maybe it won’t be packed at all. Maybe it’s a small party, quiet and intimate, the kind of gathering where people actually chat with each other. Where they ask questions and you’re forced to answer lest you look like a prick. 

Louis walks past the group when they stop at a building he assumes is Harry’s, and he keeps walking until he can round the corner. He finds a stoop that’s somewhat sheltered from the wind and huddles there, cursing under his breath. 

He can barely recognize himself when he gets like this. He’s not naturally insecure, he’s not  _ shy _ , he’s not anti-social. He’s just managed to turn himself into a weirdo, that’s all, and not even a proud one at that. The thought alone of one of Harry’s friends asking what he does for a living makes him feel like he’s choking. 

_ It’s okay _ , he thinks, back against the cold brick and thinking back on his conversation with Liam a few days ago.  _ It’s not that weird.  _

Maybe Harry’s friend’s are quirky enough to think it’s cool. So Louis writes porn for a living. So he uses Harry as inspiration to write smut so that thousands can get off, so what? So he’s so fucked up he dissociates when he’s having sex because it’s stopped feeling real at some point, but who’s gonna judge him? 

Maybe he should’ve gotten drunk before leaving the house.

Louis loiters until he’s almost too cold to move, and then peels himself from his little nook and goes back around the corner. He presses the buzzer for Harry’s flat with half-frozen fingers and then waits. 

There’s a staticy rattle and a buzz a moment later, and Louis pushes his way inside, the door unlocking with a soft click.

Harry’s building is modern, the lobby all steel and marble, the lifts nothing like the shuddery cages at Louis’. Is not the kind of place Louis pictured Harry living in - somehow he can only imagine Harry in a cottage in a meadow or something equally mad. He may have half-frozen his brain as well as his fingers during his short freak-out. He removes his hood and tries to fix his hair as he goes up to Harry’s floor, and when the lift doors ping open, he doesn’t have to check for a flat number - the voices and music coming from down the corridor are beacon enough.

The door opens before Louis can knock, fist in the air, jaw set, and he’s almost trampled when someone spills out of the flat, talking over their shoulder and not watching where they’re going. 

“Oh, hey, Louis!” Niall greets him even as he stumbles and has to hold on to Louis’ shoulders not to send them both to the floor. “You made it! Sorry, sorry, sorry. Jesus Christ, you’re  _ freezing _ , mate.”

Louis laughs as Niall rubs at his arms over his jacket. He knows Niall quite well, has spent more than a few afternoons holed up at Anne’s with him, working while Niall tended the shop or read for his classes. 

“Alright, Mum, I’m fine,” Louis bats him away. “You running away already?”

“Nah, just popping down to the shop for some drinks. S’always too much or not enough with this crowd.”

Louis can’t see anything over Niall’s shoulder other than a wall and what he knows is one of Harry’s paintings propped up on a small table. He can hear people talking further inside, though, the kind of talking that’s more banter than conversation. 

“I’ll come with,” he says and steps back to let Niall out. 

“Mate, you should go inside where it’s warm, it’s only a couple beers, got a bag ‘n everything.”

He shows Louis a bundled up tote with Anne’s logo printed on it, but Louis waves the comment off and walks back to the lifts. 

Anything to buy himself some extra time.

.

They buy two six-packs of beer and a handful of candy at a Tesco nearby and they’re back before Louis is ready. They don’t need to wait for someone to buzz them in this time - Niall lets them into the building with his own key. Louis remembers the day Harry honoured Niall with a key to his flat. He put it inside a bun at the shop and Niall nearly broke a tooth biting into it. Louis thought Niall was going to quit on the spot and Harry apologised at least three hundred times, looking close to tears by the time Niall finally forgave him. It was over a year ago, the summer when one of Harry’s flatmates was moving out and Niall was moving in.

“Hold tight to the snacks,” Niall says as they go into the lift. “Sweets have a tendency to go missing in this place. ‘specially when Reginald comes out.”

Niall has talked about Reginald enough in the time Louis’ known him that he doesn’t need to ask to know he’s talking about a bong. Harry’s bong, which Louis also knows he keeps inside a cupboard with the dishes and has told his mum is a flower vase when she saw it on the coffee table once. Louis smiles to himself and wonders what Harry’s like when he’s high. It sounds like he’ll get to find out soon.

Niall unlocks the door to the flat and Louis follows him inside, skin tingling with the sudden change in temperature. The voices coming from somewhere in the flat thunder down the hall where him and Niall stand, but it doesn’t sound like there’s that many people. Louis can smell pot right away, along with something sweet and cloying like vanilla. They go through a short corridor and then Niall turns left and holds the bag with beer up to some weak cheers. 

“Found this one outside, too,” he says, and steps aside so that Louis can see a small, neatly decorated living room, people on the sofa and on the floor, beer bottles and some pizza boxes on the coffee table, and Harry, sitting on a red haired boy’s lap and leaning against his chest, eyes closed.

Louis is not sure what his face does at the sight, but he freezes for half a second before he recovers and lifts his hand up in greeting, looking away quickly.

A new thought pops into his head, something he hasn’t considered until now: Harry  _ dates _ . 

Not right now, Louis doesn’t think, and not for some time, but in the three years they have known each other, Harry has dated four men that Louis is aware of. 

There was the one who picked Harry up from work one time during the first month Louis became a regular at the shop and shattered Louis’ heart a little bit when he greeted Harry with a kiss on the lips. Harry had never mentioned a boyfriend before, and Louis had been gathering his courage for weeks, feeling things out, making Harry laugh and flirting under the guise of relentless teasing.

Later, there was the one who Louis only heard stories about, mostly from Niall. He was in one of Harry’s classes and apparently liked to drink a little too much even though he couldn’t hold his liquor at all. He didn’t last long.

The third one stuck around for months, long after Harry started getting a pinched look on his face every time he got a text from him. Louis met him several times, and sure he was biased, but he never liked the bloke. Harry looked gloom for weeks after they broke it off, even his art taking a dark turn for a bit, but Louis was proud to still be able to pry an honest smile out of him every once in awhile. 

And then there was Owen. Louis knows Owen wasn’t a serious boyfriend. None of them had been, according to Harry, but thanks to Niall and his big mouth, Louis also knows that Owen and Harry rarely did anything other than shag.

It made Louis both burn with jealousy and feel like he was withering with insecurity everytime Harry used to mention him. Even now, when Louis hasn’t heard Owen’s name in months, just thinking about the possibility of running into him here, of him being the guy Harry is sitting on, makes Louis want to turn around and leave. 

But then he remembers sitting together on his sofa, Harry’s hand in his. Remembers Harry snooping through Louis’ bookcase and picking out all the children books he could find just to talk to Louis about them. He thinks of Harry asking him to come to his party and staring, unblinking, until Louis said yes. Maybe Harry hasn’t been pining like Louis has, but he’s giving Louis a chance now, and Louis isn’t going to waste it.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, and focuses on a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor, the one who seems to be paying him the most attention, “was recruited for shopping duty.”

_ “Offered,” _ Niall clarifies and sets the bag on the table with a loud rattle. Harry sits up with a start, jostling the boy he’s using as a chair so that he spills the beer he’s drinking down his chin.

“Fuck, Harry,” he grumbles, but Harry pays him no mind, looking half-asleep with his droopy eyes and flushed cheeks. He looks around with a slow smile, and when he finally spots Louis, he does a double take and seems to snap awake. 

“Lou,” he says, scrambling up and making the boy underneath him spill even more beer on himself, cursing and pushing Harry off. “You made it.”

He’s in his socks, and he pads up to Louis with his arms open, catching the corner of the coffee table with his shin and barely stumbling, although everyone in the room tells him off for knocking a wine glass onto the carpet. Harry doesn’t react, just walks right into Louis’ space and engulfs him in a tight hug, arms on top of Louis’ shoulders and around his neck. His hair smells like sugar and pot. Louis hugs him back as best he can, back bending backwards under Harry’s weight. 

“You’re cold,” Harry mumbles against his ear and Louis has to keep himself from shivering, a tingle running down his spine.

“I’ve just stepped inside, give me a few minutes,” Louis tells him, patting his back, all too aware of the room full of strangers (and Niall) staring at them. Harry doesn’t seem to mind the stares, rubbing up and down Louis’ back with big, heavy hands. The fabric of his shirt is soft and silky under Louis’ palms.

“Harry, let him take his coat off, mate,” Niall laughs, throwing an empty plastic cup at them. Harry leans back, hands on Louis’ shoulders, and well, Louis doesn’t have to wonder what he’s like high anymore. Here Harry is, dopey-eyed and clingy, clearly hazed out of his mind. Louis grins at him, nerves fading into nothing.

“Started early, did you?” 

“No,” Harry drawls with a smile of his own. “You’re late.”

“True,” Louis complies and shrugs out of his jacket. A look around tells him he should lose his shoes as well, so he steps on his heels to take them off. 

“Been drinking since brunch,” someone says from the floor.

“Been snogging Reginald since this afternoon too,” someone else calls and Louis has half a second to feel off-kilter before he remembers the bloody bong’s name.

“So you started  _ really _ early,” he says and Harry scowls, lower lip jutting out.

“S’my birthday,” he says and then looks over his shoulder. “And I didn’t snog Reginald, I only sucked him a little.”

Louis can feel his eyes bulge and he looks away, face burning. He doesn’t need the mental images, thank you, and he didn’t need to hear Harry say he  _ sucked someone a little  _ in that deep voice of his. He shuffles his feet and tries to pretend none of what happened in the last ten seconds affected him in any way. 

When Harry turns forward again, he stares at Louis in that intense way of his, somehow made worse with the way his pupils are blown out and how he’s still standing close enough to touch. Louis wants to squirm a little. He has to make an effort not to stare at Harry’s lips. 

“You should come to my room,” Harry declares and Louis blanches again as the few people around them catcall - the boy Harry was sitting on included, Louis notes.

“To leave his  _ coat _ ,” Harry clarifies with red cheeks and another scowl that softens when he meets Louis’ eye. “And to show you what I drew,” he says softly, just for Louis to hear.

It takes Louis a moment to figure out what Harry’s talking about, but then he remembers Harry drew something for him - for his story - and he’s nearly overwhelmed with how much he fucking  _ likes _ him. 

“Lead the way,” he says, and follows Harry out of the room. He hears Harry’s friends laughing as they leave but he doesn’t care. Harry takes them to a room at the end of another corridor. He ushers Louis in and then closes the door behind them, leaving them in the dark.

“Um,” Louis laughs, trying not to think of how many sex scenes he’s written that start just (or almost) like this. “A bit difficult to show me your drawing if I can’t s-”

Harry presses to his front and Louis’ voice dies in his throat with a squeak. He can’t even swallow before the light comes on and Harry steps back, wobbling on his feet. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, pinching his lip between his fingers and still staring. Louis would find it creepy, but apparently he’s so far gone he finds it endearing instead. “I’m a little woozy.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” Louis says and looks away from the magnetic pull of Harry’s eyes. 

The room is small, the bed unmade under the window and the desk in the corner weighed down by piles of sketchbooks and loose sheets of paper. There are pencils and brushes in cups, bundled-up rags on the floor, and a wooden box with tubes of paint in it in a corner. It smells like Louis’ art room back in primary, like paint and paper. There’s a bookcase by the door, cramped with books, their spines colourful and worn. Louis wants to go through the shelves, just like Harry did at Louis’ place.

“It’s messy,” Harry apologises. “I work in the living room. Normally. But I had to clear it out…don’t have a proper office like you.”

“I barely use the office anyway,” Louis tells him gently, watching the way Harry’s wringing his hands in front of him. The shirt he’s wearing is glittery and tucked into high-waisted trousers that make his legs look endless, even in his socks as he is. Louis notices for the first time that his nails are painted silver, to match his shirt. “That’s new.”

Harry follows Louis’ line of sight and spreads his fingers in front of himself.

“I can’t wear nail polish when I’m at work,” he says, smiling down at his own hands. “They look nice, though, yeah? I’ve gotten better at it.”

“They look lovely,” Louis tells him and then wants to bite his tongue off because it came out a lot fonder than he meant to. Harry must pick up on it, because he looks up at Louis with a little spark in his eye. The air around them turns heavy, or maybe that’s just Louis, who’s forgotten how to breathe all of a sudden. 

In the three years they have known each other, Louis has dated two men and slept with five. Harry doesn’t know about any of them except one. Louis had politely kicked the guy out the morning after, and then found him at Anne’s half an hour later, trying to chat Harry up. It was so awkward Louis couldn’t look Harry in the eye the entire time, and when it still seemed like the bloke was not giving up, Louis made up a meeting and escaped back to his flat. Harry sent him little smirks for days afterwards. It took Louis a long time to realise that the reason Harry looked so smug was because the guy had been confirmation that Louis was gay, which at the time wasn’t something Louis had brought up. 

Sexual orientation wasn’t something Louis stressed about when he wrote. When he was Austin, everyone in his stories was unapologetically queer, and when he was Catherine Darling, his heroines were usually hypnotised by Lorenzo’s knob quite early on, and Lorenzo barely strung more than five words together to form a coherent sentence in English, so there wasn’t really ever a chance to explore. 

When Louis writes about sex, he leaves all the weird bits - like awkward first conversations, like that anxiety-inducing tentativeness when you’re not sure what the other person wants, like what happens  _ after _ sex - out. 

The last time he went out with someone, Louis found him on Tinder, so their intentions were clear from the beginning. When they shagged, Louis kept editing the scene in his head:  _ his face should be tilted up, my hands shouldn’t be getting so sweaty, he should have let me roll him over all the way, my arm shouldn’t be getting numb.  _ His mind was far away, lost in what would later become a Hunter scene, and afterwards he wondered if maybe he was broken for good. Sex used to be good before he started picking the act apart for work - now he can barely wank without imagining himself as a character from a story, never able to let himself go completely, the feeling of being watched and studied prickling at him.

Standing in Harry’s room when both of them  _ know _ there’s something brewing below the surface feels like nothing Louis writes or could ever hope to write. He can’t even think about it as fiction anymore, because he’s quite sure fiction has ever made him feel like there’s electricity sparking at his fingertips - or like he might be sick any second - and they haven’t even touched each other yet. Louis doesn’t even know if he’s touching Harry at all tonight, at least not until he catches up to him or Harry sobers back up to Louis’ level, but there’s still something there, and he knows Harry knows. Fuck, even his friends out in the living room know. 

“I’ve got you a present,” Louis says, and Harry blinks.

“You’ve already-”

“Another present.” He rummages in his jacket pockets until he finds the small stack of crinkled paper he put there earlier. He hands it to Harry with little ceremony, glad that he was able to send his other present via email and not see Harry’s reaction up close. 

He doesn’t have a choice now, since his eyes drift to Harry’s face no matter how badly he wants to look at the floor. He watches as Harry turns his present this way and that, bringing it close to his face to read what’s written on the front. 

“Four Warrior Princesses,” he reads out loud, his mouth curling into a smile, “by Louis.”

“It’s got original illustrations and everything, a first edition. One of a kind.”

Louis wrote it for his sisters when he was fifteen and he remembers being so proud of it. He printed it out in his school computer room and then stole a couple extra sheets of paper to doodle terrible renditions of his sisters in princess dresses brandishing swords and axes, fighting monsters and evil warlocks and zombies. 

The girls had been too young to appreciate Louis’ genius, though, so Louis had made them a copy and kept the original pages himself so they wouldn’t get torn and covered in sticky fingerprints. 

Harry pages through the entire thing twice, dimpling all over, and then closes it and looks up at Louis again.

“I love it,” he announces solemnly and Louis laughs at his seriousness, feeling light. “But I can’t keep it, it’s your sisters’-”

“They’ve got copies,” he tells Harry, waving him off when he tries to hand the paper back. 

“But-”

“Are you turning down your birthday present I was so thoughtful to upend my flat for?” Louis asks loudly, making Harry jump a little. It takes the edge off Louis a bit, to be in control like this. “What happened to the polite young man you used to be? Are you turning bitter in your old age?”

Harry laughs.

“It’s not my birthday yet,” he says and Louis narrows his eyes at him.

“And what about you drinking all day  _ because _ it’s your birthday?”

“It’s my almost-birthday, my birthday  _ eve _ .”

“Right,” Louis allows with a good-natured eye-roll. “You’re just spoiled, aren’t you.”

“Hey!”

“Making Niall go out to buy you more drinks, getting  _ two _ presents from me-”

“But I-”

“Luring me into your room under false pretenses,” Louis finishes and crosses his arms over his chest, trying hard to keep his smile in check.

It looks like it takes a moment for Harry to figure out what Louis means, but when he does, he goes delightfully pink. 

“Not false pretenses,” he mumbles and then half-walks, half-stumbles towards his desk. Louis watches him as he opens a drawer to put Louis’ present safely inside, and then he’s searching through the pile of papers on the worktop, dropping things on the floor and making an even bigger mess. Eventually, he comes up with a big cardboard folder like the ones Louis has seen him use for his classes. He looks shy when he turns back around. Harry’s always a bit apprehensive showing Louis his work, but, unlike Louis, he always does in the end, no matter how nervous it makes him. 

Unlike Louis, Harry has nothing to be ashamed of. He’s brilliant, his work is lovely, and he doesn’t go around perving on unsuspecting people. Again, unlike Louis. 

“M’not sure if it’s what you pictured,” Harry says, hugging the folder to his chest. “But it’s what I saw, when I was reading.”

Louis says nothing - he just waits for Harry to brace himself. He does so visibly, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, as if Louis is any definition of intimidating. Then he walks back over to Louis and hands him the folder. 

Louis opens it and it’s- 

“Oh,” slips out. “Oh, it’s sick, Harry.”

It’s like Harry’s taken it straight out of Louis’ brain. The room, the sunlight coming in through the half-open blinds, the record player and the canvas shoes. The bare leg peeking out from between the sheets and the mop of hair (straighter and lighter than Louis pictured, but still perfect) resting on the pillow. The colours on it are slightly muted, almost like an old photograph, and Louis wants to run his fingers through it, poke every little detail with the tip of his finger. 

“Yeah? You like it?” Harry asks and Louis looks up to find him biting on his thumbnail, a line between his eyebrows. 

“Of course I do,” Louis tells him, smiling. “You’re really talented, Harry.”

He sees the tops of Harry’s cheeks darkening, his smile a bit drunk-stupid and his eyes still mostly pupil. Maybe Louis could kiss him. Maybe he should. In a story, this would be the moment he did, wouldn’t it? They’re alone and there’s a closed door between them and the rest of the people in the flat. They’ve exchanged gifts and they’re standing toe to toe and there’s a bed right  _ there _ . 

Not that Louis has any intention of using it but- this just feels like a Moment. 

Except Harry is swaying a bit on his feet and has been drinking since before noon. Besides, Louis is definitely not a character from a story. He can’t help but overanalyze everything, from the timing to the angle to  _ later _ , when they’ll have to go back to Harry’s party, something that would be irrelevant in the sort of stories he writes, where getting off is usually followed by a convenient fade-to-black. A kiss could be wonderful, or it could make everything awkward and terrible. And while risks sound brave and romantic in fiction, Louis is not willing to risk losing Harry just because his lips look full and pink and wet, almost begging-

There’s a knock on the door. 

“It’s rude to walk out on your own party, you know!” someone yells from the other side and Harry’s smile turns sheepish, eyes flicking towards the door before returning to Louis. 

“You wanna go back out?” he asks and Louis hesitates, because he really doesn’t but he knows an out when he sees one.

“I could get a drink,” he says, placing his jacket and Harry’s folder on the bed, giving the drawing one last look before closing the lid over it. “And I’d rather your friends didn’t hate me for stealing you.”

“But I stole  _ you _ ,” Harry grins before he turns back towards the door and opens it to find one of his friends on he other side, hands on her hips.

Harry falls on her like an over-eager octopus, pulling her into a hug that looks too tight and doesn’t make Louis jealous, not even a little bit. 

.

As the night goes on, Louis gets increasingly tipsy and Harry seems to come down a bit. He’s all but a puddle of limbs on the sofa next to Louis, shimmery shirt half-unbuttoned and legs splayed, pressing against the outside of Louis’ thigh. His friends are all set on annoying him, sharing embarrassing stories with Louis while Harry covers his face with his hands and pretends he hates it. Louis can see the smile peeking between his fingers, though, and cackles with every anecdote, feeling loose and light-headed as he nurses his second bottle.

He eventually ends up tucked into Harry’s side, shoulder slotted against Harry’s armpit and resting his head back against Harry’s arm. He shed his jumper some time ago and everytime Harry laughs, Louis feels it in his chest through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. At some point during the night, his hand has found its way to Harry’s knee.

Before the afternoon they spent at Louis’ flat, they’d never touched much. No more than quick hugs, lingering nudges, the occasional high-five. Harry is warm. His leg feels solid under Louis’ palm, muscles shifting as he moves. His curls are down and framing his face, and they tickle Louis’ cheek when Harry ducks his head as he laughs. Louis wishes he could tilt his chin up and bury his nose in Harry’s neck, just for a second, but he’s not that drunk yet, and he remains where he is, hunched over under Harry’s arm, pressed as close together as they can without either of them in the other’s lap.

He wants Harry in his lap. He wouldn’t mind sitting in his lap, either. 

He puts the beer down.

“Where do you lads know each other from?” one of Harry’s friends asks from the floor. Louis’ forgotten his name. 

“Lou works at the shop,” Harry says, voice rumbling. 

“Yeah? You work together?”

Before Louis can even open his mouth to correct him, another one of Harry’s friends chimes in.

“He works  _ from _ the shop,” she says. She’s sprawled on the rug with her back against the sofa, so Louis can only see the back of her head. She’s got Reginald held loosely in her arms, tipping dangerously to the side. 

“Yeah, he’s a  _ writer,” _ another one says. 

“Oh,” the first guy says, and then,  _ “Ooh, _ that’s  _ you _ ?” 

Everyone around them seems to nod or give some sort of confirmation and Louis has no idea why all of these strangers seem to already know what Louis was dreading having to confess, except that Harry has gone very still beside him and, of course. When Louis looks up, Harry’s gone red down to his half-exposed chest. 

“S’nice to put a face to the name, mate. You’re famous!” 

Harry makes a weird squawking sound in protest, but Niall speaks right over him.

“That’s him, that’s him, been curious for years, these guys.”

“Years?” Louis asks and Harry groans before leaning over to grab a plastic cup from the table and taking a swig. Louis stares at the way his throat bobs as he swallows and then looks away feeling a little dirty. Harry’s friends are still staring at him.

“No, we all know him,” the girl who came looking for them in the bedroom says. She’s taken Harry’s place in the redhead bloke’s lap, and Louis’ starting to think he plays chair often. 

“You do?” Louis asks. He moved away when Harry sat up and his side is cold, but now he feels weird snuggling in close again. There’s too much attention on him. 

“Yeah, we’ve all seen you at the shop.”

It makes sense - Harry’s friends visit Anne’s all the time, but other than Niall, Louis has never talked to any of them. Half the time he barely registers people coming and going into the shop, too immersed in whatever he’s writing or trying to write. 

“You’re always so focused, clicking away.” A dark-haired guy with glasses mimes squinting at a screen and typing on an invisible keyboard, face scrunched up in concentration and shoulders slouched forward. Louis hopes that’s not what he looks like when he works.

“Oh, well,” he starts, darting a quick glance at Harry to find him glaring at his friends, a frown on his face. “Nice to meet you again, I guess.”

“What kind of writing do you do, Louis?” a girl sitting on his other side asks and Louis can actually feel the blood drain from his face. 

“Oh,” he says with more ease than he thought possible, “this and that.”

“He writes novels,” Harry says and Louis wants the sofa to swallow him whole. He slumps back against the cushions but a second later Harry pulls him in against his side again and Louis sort of melts.  “Crime novels. Right?”

It’s a valid assumption, going by what little Louis has revealed over the years, and Louis ignores the guilt growing in the pit of his stomach when he nods.

“Yeah, something like that,” he says and Harry grins. 

“Harry’s got quite the book collection,” Redhead Boy says with a smirk. “Has he shown you yet?”

“No-”

“Hush, you.” Harry throws a paper napkin at him. It falls by Louis’ feet a little sadly. “It’s my birthday, no one’s allowed to tease me.”

All the faces around them light up, but before anyone can open their mouth, Harry holds his free hand up in the air.

“Birthday  _ weekend _ , everyone’s supposed to do what I say and be nice and  _ quiet _ .”

Louis laughs as Harry’s friends grumble and thrown their own napkins and coasters at him, most of them hitting their target, to Harry’s dismay.

“Lou, tell them,” he whines, batting his hand in front of his face to shield against Niall’s peanut projectiles. 

“I dunno, love, I’m new here. I feel I should side with them so they like me, yeah?”

Harry’s friends cheer at that. Harry pouts and tries to hide behind Louis, sticking his head between his back and the sofa. Louis pats his knee and moves away so they can really get at him. Harry grabs at his t-shirt as he curls into a ball, laughing and keeping Louis close.

.

At midnight, all the lights go off and someone brings a cake from the kitchen. They sing Happy Birthday twice, once in English and once in French, since apparently two or three of Harry’s friends are from France. Harry smiles the entire time, his dimples digging into his cheeks, and after he blows out the candles, he goes around the room giving out hugs. 

Louis feels slightly out of place as he waits for Harry to make his way back to him, even though he should have been first, having been sitting next to each other all night. Harry’s cheeks are flushed and his hair is a mess when he trips his way back to the sofa, curls falling into his eyes and shirt falling over one shoulder. He throws himself at Louis and hugs him around the middle, putting his weight into it and making Louis fall backwards with an ‘oof.’ 

“Thanks for coming,” he mumbles into Louis’ chest, “and for my presents.”

“Happy birthday, H,” Louis breathes, hands on Harry’s back. “Thank you.”

“What for?” Harry asks, still pressed in close, and Louis shrugs, unwilling to say everything Harry means to him out loud. 

“Alright, alright, are we going out now or what?” someone says loudly. The rest whoop and start moving around.

Harry leans back. He’s got one knee on the sofa between Louis’ legs, his arms still around Louis, and his breath smells like something fruity and alcoholic.

“Are you coming out with us?” he asks, eyes very green and very close. His lips are sticky and Louis’ own tongue tingles with the urge to lick them.

“Can’t say no to you on your actual birthday, can I?” he says and this close, Harry’s smile looks like it takes over his entire face. 

.

 

_ Lorenzo picked up his axe and slug it over a rock-solid shoulder, his brown skin glistening. The sun was rising over the treetops and the man looked like a golden garden sculpture wearing flannel. Penelope gazed secretly down at him from her perch on the windowsill. She felt a heat between her thighs, a pulse she hadn’t felt in a long time. Her husband was sleeping just behind her on their bed, but her attention was on the handsome lumberjack-type standing in her yard staring steadily at the horizon, the sun in his eyes.  _

_ She could see the bulge in his jeans all the way from the house (on the second storey, too), and for once, no one was there to catch her staring. His undershirt clung to his broad chest with sweat and just from watching she could feel the scruff on his cheeks burning as it slid across the skin of her breasts and along her legs.  _

_ Penelope hadn’t been able to stop thinking about their encounter in the shed the day before, the way he held her up as if she weighed nothing, how his rough fingers touched her where no one but herself and her husband had ever touched before. He hadn’t said much - sometimes Penelope thought he couldn’t understand a word she was saying, his gaze could be so empty and his speech so stilted - but she hadn’t wanted words. She could still feel him. Her skin was tender where he had kissed it, and she felt empty in all the places he had filled.  _

_ On the bed, her husband stirred, and Penelope looked over her shoulder in alarm. But he had only turned over in his sleep, his face still slack, his arm stretched towards her pillow. In the afternoon, he would be going out of town for a fortnight.  _

_ Leaning towards the window, Penelope touched a finger to the lace on the top of her panties and began thinking about what, with the house to herself and a guest to entertain, she would be doing for the next two weeks.  _

 

.

Louis wakes up with cotton in his mouth and a giant fist closing around his entire head. He feels rotten, and when he shifts, there’s a sharp twinge in his knee. He remembers hitting the sidewalk at one point the night before, clinging to Harry and feeling him giggle against his shoulder as he helped Louis back to his feet. Is twenty-five too young to be too old to go out clubbing?

There was a time when Louis used to go out most nights. He would gather all his friends for drinks before going dancing, getting dizzy with alcohol and the incessant thump of music and the press of strange bodies against him. He used to love it, the noise of the clubs, the taste of watered down beers and awful cocktails. At some point he got over it and stopped - his friends scattered around the world, the hangovers not worth it anymore - but last night…. Last night felt like letting go. It’s been years since Louis was able to do that.

Harry’s friends were all nice and made an effort to include him, even when Harry got stroppy about being tossed aside on  _ his birthday _ . Louis feels like he might have heard the phrase ‘ _ but it’s my birthday _ ’ at least a million times last night, each time a little more slurred, each time a little closer to Louis ear, accompanied with a big hand on Louis’ elbow, around his waist. 

“You’re a bit of a baby, aren’t you?” Louis told him at one point as Harry dragged him away from his friends for no reason other than he felt lonely if he wasn’t clinging to anyone. 

The way Harry whined at Louis that he  _ wasn’t _ a baby didn’t help his case any. 

Louis rolls onto his back with a groan. The bed’s shit, the mattress lumpy and uneven and...not his. He opens his eyes to see an unfamiliar ceiling and then a slightly familiar room. It looks different in the morning light, but Louis recognises the pile of artwork on the desk and the pink and blue bedding. He remembers, after another minute, coming back to Harry’s - still dizzy with too many shots and too much jumping in a huddle in the middle of a club with all of Harry’s friends, all of them terrible dancers, Harry the absolute worst of the lot - and not even thinking twice about going into Harry’s room and crashing together on his bed. 

Harry was out as soon as he landed, mouth open and nose still red from the cold outside. Louis kicked his trainers off, pulled at Harry’s boots until they landed on the floor, and then fell asleep with his forehead pressed to Harry’s back.

Harry’s not sleeping anymore. He doesn’t seem to be in the room at all, and by the brightness coming through the window, Louis guesses it’s quite late. When he concentrates, he thinks he can hear voices coming from somewhere in the flat. 

He feels disgusting, his clothes stale and his eyes gritty. He wonders if it’d be weird if he took a shower, if Harry would let him borrow some joggers and a shirt. The possibility makes his heart race a little. 

Here he is, the erotic fiction writer, getting butterflies in his tummy thinking about sharing clothes with the boy he fancies.

The minutes tick by and Harry doesn’t return, so Louis eventually hauls himself up and off the bed, cracking his back as soon as his feet are on the ground. Harry really should invest in a new mattress. He pads towards the door and peeks outside. He can see the bathroom one door down the corridor, and he hurries over, for some reason worried one of Harry’s flatmates will see him. They were relentless last night, teasing Harry and catching Louis with their jokes on the rebound, making both of them blush and stutter and go for their drinks. They were nice enough, but Louis hasn’t been awake long enough to face anyone. 

When he leaves the bathroom a few minutes later, bladder relieved and teeth more or less clean with some toothpaste and his finger, Harry’s standing just outside the door, a mug in each hand. 

Louis’ brain goes through a dozen sentences before settling with, “Were you waiting for me outside the loo?”

Harry, still rumpled with sleep and wearing a t-shirt and cotton shorts that stop mid-thigh, goes red.

“Was just making sure you weren’t sick,” he grumbles, his voice hoarse and a hint of the pout he was wearing most of the night before on his face. He looks rough, as he should with the amount he drank, but Louis still wants to kiss him. “I’ve got tea.”

“I love you,” Louis breathes, going for one of the mugs and bringing it to his lips before his brain catches up with his mouth. He looks up at Harry and catches him smiling down at his own tea, eyes puffy with sleep and hair stiff and standing up with left over product. 

“And I’ve got bacon sandwiches in the kitchen,” Harry says, and Louis’ stomach rolls, both hungry and a little nauseated. “I can bring them over if you take this.”

Harry offers Louis his own cup and Louis takes it, frowning a little.

“Are we having breakfast in the bathroom?”

Harry huffs out a laugh, shuffling his feet. 

“Um, no. In my room? If you want,” he says and now Louis stomach rolls for a completely different reason. “There’s too many people in the kitchen.”

Louis doesn’t know how many people are waiting in Harry’s kitchen right now but he wholeheartedly agrees. No matter how clingy and needy Harry was last night, it wasn’t enough. Louis wants him to himself for a little bit longer. 

“Well, go get the food, go on,” he ushers Harry away and turns back towards the bedroom. “Can’t promise I’ll keep anything down, though. Someone kept pouring shots down my throat last night.”

The corner of Harry’s mouth twitches up in a guilty little smile.

“My bacon sandwiches demolish hangovers. I’ve got years of practise, you’ll see,” he says, walking backwards until he stumbles into a wall. Louis watches him lean back as if he meant to end up there the whole time, legs bare and so fucking long. There’s a tattoo on his thigh. “I’ve already had one and I feel perfect.”

“Well why’re you making me wait, then?” Louis jerks his head towards the kitchen. “Go before your flatmates get at them.”

“They wouldn’t dare,” Harry says but he scampers away all the same, and a moment later Louis can hear his loud, betrayed shout echo down the corridor.

Harry’s room is still bathed in light when Louis goes back in. He sets both teas on the floor by the bed and peers out the window. Of course Harry’s birthday would be the first sunny day they’ve had in weeks. The windowpane rattles with the wind outside but there’s barely a cloud in sight, the sky a clear blue. Louis plops down on the edge of the bed. It’s a queen, not really that big, and he still can’t believe he slept with Harry on it, close enough they were probably touching all night even though he has no memory of it. The sheets are rumpled, as messy as the rest of the room. He can see a few stray socks on the floor near a hamper and a couple of shirts falling out of the wardrobe. Now that he has time to take a closer look, there are more art supplies and books lying about than he realised the night before. 

There’s a wooden easel folded shut and stowed away behind the desk, and sketchbooks on the desk chair. There’s little piles of worn paperbacks on the floor along the walls and by the bed. They all look second-hand, old, musty editions, their pages going from faint yellow to brown. Louis gets up and goes to the cramped little bookcase, figuring that if Harry was so comfortable going through his, he wouldn’t mind Louis doing the same. 

There’s a bit of everything. Louis spots the art books right away, bigger and better cared for than the rest, quite a lot of anatomy books among them. There’re some secondary school classics - Austen, Dickens and Poe all stacked in one shelf without any kind of order. Louis findschildren classics as well, from the Grimm brothers to Lemony Snicket and Roald Dahl, organized by the color of their spine so they form a bit of a rainbow on the higher shelves. Louis smiles to himself and then…then there’s the shelves at the very bottom. He crouches close to the floor to have a better look and nearly falls on his arse when he realises what he’s seeing. Pink and purple covers, loopy cursive letters, bare chests and deep cleavage. There’s Gabaldon, there’s Woodiwiss, a bunch of other names that sound startlingly familiar to Louis, along with his publisher’s logo there at the bottom of each spine. God, there’s a Catherine Darling at the top of a pile, Lorenzo’s dumb face staring at Louis from the cover. And that’s only the straight porn. 

Louis’ blood turns cold and he stands, doesn’t dare look further. 

He goes back to sit on the bed just as Harry pushes the door open, a plate in his hand and a smile on his face.

“I’ve saved a couple, we’re good,” he announces as he closes the door again. Then he takes a good look at Louis and the smile drops off his face. “What’s wrong? Don’t feel good?”

“No, no, I’m alright,” Louis says but he sounds off even to himself, voice strained and too high. His head is throbbing and he feels like he might be sick, but he’s not sure if it’s because of last night or- He doesn’t even know why he’s reacting like this. It’s not like Harry knows who Louis is. Oh God, does he? It is quite a big coincidence, but that’s all it is - a coincidence. He knows people all over the world read Catherine’s books, and Harry clearly enjoys that sort of literature, going by the amount he keeps in his little bookcase. Louis is still a little shaken.

“Maybe you should have a sandwich,” Harry says, sounding worried, and offers him the plate. Louis takes a sandwich and bites a chunk out of it. It’s warm and greasy and it settles his stomach a bit. When Harry sits next to him, his bare thigh pressed snuggly against Louis’ hip, Louis nearly chokes on his bite. The shorts ride up, is the thing, and Louis has to pry his eyes away from pale, fuzzy skin and the bulge that becomes evident before Harry covers himself with a distracted flick of his t-shirt.

The tattoo on his thigh is a tiger and Louis doesn’t know if he wants to make fun of it or trace it with his fingers. 

“Good?” Harry asks, taking his own sandwich and tearing at it with his teeth. Louis has seen him eat before, but never this close up, never while  _ touching _ him. Harry opens his mouth obscenely wide when he eats, goes at his food tongue first, and it should be gross, but it has been established that Louis is a bit of a pervert and absolutely gone for Harry, so it’s hot instead, even when Harry still looks rumpled and puffy with sleep. 

Louis feels like he can’t breathe properly in his clothes. He feels like he probably reeks of alcohol and cigarette smoke and sweat even though Harry’s room smells like paint and old books strongly enough to cover everything else. The moment to ask Harry for joggers and a fresh shirt has passed, though, so Louis sucks it up and eats his breakfast. 

(Harry named his sister’s cat Lorenzo, Louis had suspected he reads Catherine Darling, his bookshelf really shouldn’t surprise Louis.)

“Did you have a good time? Last night?” Harry asks. 

“It was great, Haz,” Louis tells him. “Did you?”

(And it’s not that surprising that Harry reads porn targeted to middle-aged women, not really. Harry can be a little bit of a middle-aged woman sometimes, Louis knows. Or at least the stereotype of one, what with the flowers he buys every other day for his shop, the way Louis has seen him tut disapprovingly at children who go outside without their scarves and hats, or how he holds his hair away from his face with cheap hair clips when he’s baking or cleaning, apron around his waist and cheeks flushed from the heat of the ovens.)

“I had fun,” Harry says before taking another bite of his sandwich, eyes on Louis. He swallows and licks his lips before speaking again. “My friends like you.”

And he grins at Louis, crumbs sticking to his lips and dimples popping.

Louis’ palms start to sweat.

“I like them,” he says. “Friends aren’t friends if they’re not willing to torture you a little on your birthday, right?”

“They’re the worst,” Harry says, scowling. Maybe he’s remembering them shoving cake in his face before they left for the club. Or the way they kept shouting at them every time Harry managed to get Louis alone and a little ways away from the rest of the group. Or how the only time Harry had managed to grab Louis around the waist to dance, Niall and a few others had formed a circle around them and not left them alone until Harry had started laughing, drunk and loud, head thrown back and damp neck exposed. He shone in the middle of the dancefloor, with his glittery shirt and his smile, and Louis memorized the scene in his head - he wanted to write it. 

“You shouldn’t like them at all, actually,” Harry says. 

“Aw, you’re pouting again,” Louis teases, bumping his shoulder against Harry’s. “I almost missed that sight.”

Harry tries to pout harder but his smile wins out, and he bumps Louis back. He doesn’t move away, after, leaning against Louis’ side as they eat. 

(Maybe Harry is storing the books for someone else. Maybe the first of Louis’ stories he ever read was the birthday present Louis wrote especially for him and not a novel about a fake Italian bloke shagging a bored housewife on every flat surface they come across.)

“I’m glad you came,” Harry says a little while later, when they’re nursing their tea. They migrated to the head of the bed at some point, their backs against the window edge and their legs straight in front of them. Harry keeps nudging Louis’ foot with his, keeps knocking elbows. “I thought you might be angry.”

Louis frowns.

“Angry?”

“Because I kept asking about the story,” Harry clarifies and right, Louis remembers. 

“I did write a bit more,” he says and sees Harry turning to him out of the corner of his eye. 

“You did?”

Louis nods. He’s trying to stop staring at the bookcase, now right in his line of sight, but he keeps glancing over at the bottom shelf, trying to see if he can pick out another familiar spine, another familiar name. 

When Harry presses in close, Louis nearly spills his tea on his lap. 

He’s about to ask what’s wrong when Harry shifts, and then his nose is in Louis’ hair and his lips are brushing against the shell of his ear and Louis shivers, a ping running down to his belly. 

“I really like you,” Harry says, soft enough to tickle. Louis goes warm all over and he clutches at the mug in his hands. 

“I like you, too,” he says at the room, because he knows if he turns his head, he’ll be face to face with Harry, and then they’ll either kiss or they won’t, and if they don’t, inches apart and alone and on Harry’s bed, then they probably never will and Louis doesn’t dare risk it. 

Harry nudges his nose against Louis’ temple like a cat asking for scritches, and Louis pries one of his hands from the deathgrip he has on his teacup and places it on Harry’s thigh. 

He forgot Harry was wearing shorts, and they both startle when Louis touches warm, bare skin, soft and a little prickly with hair.

“Louis,” Harry mumbles against Louis’ ear, shifting closer, “can you look at me?”

Louis isn’t sure he can, but he tries. He turns his head and Harry moves back just far enough so their noses won’t bump. He looks just about as nervous as Louis feels, eyes wide and anxious, his eyebrows furrowed. 

“You know I like you as in I fancy you, right?” he asks and Louis would laugh, but when he opens his mouth he feels all the air leave his body instead. “Do you?”

“I, I do now, love, thanks for clarifying,” he says and his heart is pounding, racing in his chest, so loud Louis can almost hear it. “I mean it that way, too.”

Harry exhales in relief, a hand on his chest, and smiles. Louis is so fucking endeared he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

“And you know yesterday was a date, kind of. Right?”

Louis’ belly gives a turn, and he squeezes Harry’s thigh in his hand, hard enough he feels muscle tensing under his palm.

“No, I hadn’t realised,” he says, trying to sound calm. 

“Oh.” Harry frowns again, eyes roaming over Louis’ face, teacup still in his hands. “Would you’ve said yes if-”

“Yes,” Louis cuts him off, squeezing again. “Of course.”

“Oh.” Harry traps his lip between his teeth but Louis can still see the grin struggling to break free. Louis lets go of his thigh and reaches up, fingers a little trembly, and thumbs Harry’s lip free. Harry’s cheeks go pink and Louis sort of...gets lost for a moment. He runs his knuckles along Harry’s jaw and Harry nuzzles against his hand and smiles, eyes all lit up. 

Harry’s cheek is prickly with stubble, so thin and light Louis can’t see it but feels it against his skin. Harry's hair is matted and the back of his neck is warm when Louis’ hand slips there, thumb behind Harry’s ear. The part of him that’s still thinking and processing things other than how pretty Harry’s eyes are expects some resistance, but Harry seems to go slack as soon as Louis pushes just the tiniest bit, and he all but falls forward, their tea sloshing dangerously. 

Neither of them care.

Harry catches his upper lip first, so Louis can test the softness of Harry’s full lower lip, plush and warm and damp. He closes his eyes and grips Harry’s neck hard, inhaling through his nose and holding the kiss for a moment, too overwhelmed to move. 

Harry clearly doesn’t feel the same way. He squirms closer and grabs at Louis’ shirt with the hand not holding his cup, clenches his fist around the fabric and pulls. He kisses Louis’ mouth over and over, letting out these little whimpers that make Louis’ belly go tight - chaste pecks followed by open-mouthed kisses followed by a swipe of his tongue along Louis’s parted lips and  _ then _ Louis reacts, opening up and kissing back, tangling his hand in Harry’s curls just to hold on to something, light-headed and burning. 

Harry smells like he took a shower sometime after waking up, and beneath the soap, like sugar and fresh bread. Louis doesn’t want to think about what he smells like himself, choosing instead to focus on Harry’s taste (tea and bacon, unsurprisingly) and the noises he’s making, the rough slide of their chins and the slickness of their tongues.

Louis likes to write about kissing - he usually goes overboard and half of it ends up getting scrapped - but there are no words in his head while he kisses Harry. There’s just white noise and a jumble of thoughts that basically come down to  _ yes _ and  _ don’t fuck this up.  _

He’s kissing  _ Harry. _ Lovely coffee shop Harry, who fancies him and sneakily asked him on a date. Is a good thing the thought never crossed Louis’ mind or he would’ve had a stroke stressing about it. He didn’t even guess he would stay over, much less end up  _ snogging, _ barely touching each other because they’re still holding-

“Here,” Harry breathes, pulling away. 

Dizzy, Louis opens his eyes. There are red splotches on Harry’s cheeks, and his  _ mouth-  _ It looks obscene, swollen and dark and spit-slick. Louis watches him put his mug on the windowsill next to another small pile of books and then reach for Louis’, fingers brushing and sending sparks up Louis’ arm. 

Then Harry dives in again, both arms going around Louis and body pushing Louis back so that, eventually, when Louis can’t push back anymore, they slide down onto the bed proper, although sideways and too close to the wall but who the fuck cares? 

It takes a while for them to find a rhythm. Louis always forgets what it’s like to kiss someone for the first time, how it always takes some time before he unlearns all the other people he’s kissed before. It turns slow, less frantic, and their hands loosen and start roaming. Louis touches Harry’s back. He feels Harry’s shoulder blades shifting as Harry rests his elbows on either side of Louis’ head. His ribs expand under Louis’ palms as he breathes. Harry’s fingers twine in his hair, his lower half slowly inching downwards until they’re pressed together, Harry lying between Louis’ legs, chest to chest, hips aligned.

Louis lets out a groan when he remembers Harry’s little shorts, probably pulling tight around his bum as he grinds down. For a second, he sees everything from above, just like his brain can’t help but analyse their position and how it would look to someone looking in on them. Reading about it. 

But then Harry whimpers and pulls back with a slick sound, immediately latching his mouth to the underside of Louis’ jaw and Louis slams back into his body - this feels too good for him not to be present for it. 

He tilts his chin up, giving Harry more room, and each nip and lick and peck Harry gives him makes him harder, thighs closing around Harry’s hips, fingers twisting in Harry’s hair and forcing their mouths together again, open and wet. 

Louis’ been fantasizing about this for nearly three years. He wonders how long it’s been for Harry. He wonders if he’s been thinking about Louis like this, looking forward to their mornings together, silently gathering the courage to ask him out. 

Or maybe it’s new. Maybe it was the story that did it. Thinking about the story, even hazy-brained as he is, makes him think of Harry’s bookshelf full of porn, and then, then a terrible thought pops into his head: maybe Harry recognized his writing when he read the story Louis wrote for him.

It makes Louis’ chest go cold and he must go tense, because Harry stops and leans back, hair like a curtain around his face. 

“Alright?” he asks, voice absolutely shot just from kissing. Louis wants to know what he sounds like when he’s about to come, or after, fucked out and sated and happy. 

He nods, licking his lips. They tingle, puffy and raw, and Harry follows the movement with his eyes, intense as always, if not a little more heavy-lidded than usual. 

“Happy birthday?” Louis offers. He can feel Harry’s semi pressing against his thigh. Harry grins at his words, plopping down to nuzzle against Louis’ neck, where Louis can’t see anymore but he can  _ feel _ him smiling. 

“I’ve wanted this for my birthday for a long time,” he mumbles against Louis’ skin and Louis pushes his hips up, hands toying with the hem of Harry’s shirt but not brave enough yet to pull it up. He hasn’t done this in months. 

“Yeah?”

Harry nods, kissing down to Louis’ shoulder. 

“Like, for at least two birthdays,” he says.

“Really?” 

Harry nods again. He goes up onto his elbows and gazes down at Louis, bumping their noses together like a puppy and smiling when Louis turns his head and kisses below his eye. 

“But you were very busy and important and like, a proper adult,” Harry goes on in this new, rough voice of his, “And I was but a humble art student.”

Louis laughs. “A proper adult? Since when?”

“You’re a  _ writer _ . You make art for a living, Lou. That’s the dream, isn’t it? And you’re practically my age-”

“Two years older, love.”

_ “-practically my age, _ and you write actual novels that people buy and read. It’s amazing.”

Louis squirms a little. “I thought we agreed my work isn’t art.”

“It is,” Harry argues and isn’t that pout familiar? Except now Louis has permission to stretch his neck and kiss it away. 

Harry makes a happy sound, opening up and dropping back down against Louis’ chest, to which Louis huffs through his nose and squeezes Harry’s soft hips. He’s touching skin, he realises, his hands having wandered under Harry’s shirt on their own.

They kiss and kiss and Harry rubs himself against Louis and Louis tries to keep himself from touching Harry’s arse. He’s not sure- well, Harry hasn’t touched his, or anywhere below the neck, not with his hands, and maybe he just wants to kiss and that’s fine, more than fine, Louis could kiss him forever, really-

“Wanna,” Harry slurs, mouthing at Louis’ jaw. 

“What?” Louis rasps.

“Want you on top.”

The words make Louis’ cock throb, trapped in his day-old jeans, trapped underneath Harry, with no room to get hard without it being a little painful. Louis is halfway there anyway, no way he’s not. 

They manage to roll themselves over, towards the pillows, and once Louis is straddling Harry’s hips, sitting on him, Harry’s hands go straight to his arse and squeeze. 

Louis’ breath hitches and he grinds down, right against where Harry is very obviously hard in his tiny cotton shorts, the line of his cock resting along the ridge between hip and thigh. It makes Harry let out a rumbling moan, bucking his hips and nearly sending Louis flying. He catches himself against Harry’s chest before bending down to kiss him again, slicker and dirtier that before, purpose behind it now, sweat breaking on his forehead and under his arms, jeans steadily growing tighter.

He rubs his hands along Harry’s chest and feels him breathe, fast and uneven as he rolls his hips. He’s at Louis’ mercy now, though, unable to get enough friction unless Louis presses down, and Louis files away the fact that he  _ asked _ to be underneath him for later. 

With one last, lingering kiss, Louis pulls away and braces himself with his hands on the mattress bracketing Harry’s head. He ignores the discomfort of his zipper digging into his flesh and lies between Harry’s legs instead of straddling him, bringing their groins together. Harry gulps in air and reaches up to hold on to Louis’ wrists and Louis’ head is spinning, everything blurry and going too fast and if anyone had told him yesterday that this is how he would be spending his morning he would have laughed in their face. 

He grinds down, firm and slow and dragging, and Harry throws his head back with a gasp before tucking his chin to his chest to watch, chewing on his lip and letting his knees fall open a little more every time Louis rolls against him. They’re wearing too many clothes - this is something Louis would have done at sixteen, rushing and scared of getting caught - but Harry looks blissed out. He’s pink and sweating and gasping as Louis brings him closer. Louis wants to touch him properly. He has to stop himself from reaching down because he doesn’t know how to stop and ask and he  _ has _ to ask, doesn’t he. This isn’t one of his stories. 

Harry jerks and pulls on Louis’ wrists and one of Louis’ hands slides down the mattress and under a pillow and bumps into something.  _ Lube,  _ Louis thinks.  _ Or a toy. Or both.  _

He grabs whatever it is (because if it is lube maybe Louis can communicate how much he wants to jerk Harry off just by showing the bottle to him) and pulls it out. It’s a book. Dogeared and worn, the pages all bent at the edges. It doesn’t even close properly, some sections clearly well-read. It makes Louis smile and go down on one elbow so he can kiss Harry’s face, the hand holding the book still stretched out towards the pillows. 

“Should,” Harry mumbles, slurring a bit, “should take your clothes off. And mine. Don’t wanna come in my pants, Lou.”

Louis nods and is about to move back to pull Harry’s shorts off when he glances up and all of him sort of...stops.

_ Golden Barrell, _ it reads on the cover, where the silhouette of a gun and a man superpose in blues and reds.  _ A Hunter Page Novel.  _

And then at the top, in startling white,  _ Austin Williams. _

“What-” He tries, his throat suddenly dry. “What’s this?”

It’s a Hunter novel. The second one, to be more precise. The filthiest by far, the one with the terrace scene that Louis wrote after watching Harry carry sacks of flour on his back because the delivery man hurt his knee and couldn’t and- And Harry’s shirt was plastered to his back with sweat by the time he was finished, and Louis hadn’t known he was strong enough to haul fifty kilos of flour around without complaint, and his arms were bare and tattooed and he still smiled at the delivery man like it was nothing and- It’s the one Louis wrote after having sex with someone and finding it disappointing and impersonal. He put Hunter in a high-end hotel bar and had him shag his mark in one of the staff break rooms with Barrett watching the surveillance camera feed from the van outside while Hunter moaned and writhed for show. It’s the one with the threesome in the holding cell, and the one with that one scene were a mobster makes Hunter kneel at his feet and fucks his mouth until Hunter chokes and nearly blacks out. It’s a collection of some of the filthiest bits Louis has ever written and Harry  _ read _ it. 

“S’just a dirty book,” Harry says with a whine, pulling at Louis’s shirt. “You can mmh-make fun of me later.”

But Louis is frozen, and no even Harry, needy and hard and trapped underneath him so they’re touching everywhere can make him...process this any faster.

There’s no way. There’s no way this is a coincidence. There’s no way Harry’s got a Hunter novel all but falling to pieces under his pillow  _ and _ Louis in his bed at the same time by  _ chance _ . Louis looks at Harry. Their faces are close - so close Louis’ vision blurs and he has to lean back for it to focus again. He leans all the way back, ignoring Harry’s protests, until he’s kneeling between Harry’s legs. He’s still holding the book, and Harry looks from it to Louis, wide-eyed and flushed.

“Um,” he starts as he lowers his hands to his belly and twists his fingers together, obviously resisting the urge to cover himself. Louis has no idea what he himself looks like but Harry looks alarmed at whatever his face is doing. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s this?” Louis repeats, and he can’t think. He can’t get past- there’s no explanation that would- He’s cold all over, his skin clammy with drying sweat

“It’s a book, Lou. I’m...it’s just a dirty book my-”

“It’s not just a dirty book,” Louis hears himself say. “You know it’s not.”

“What?”

“You know.”

“I know what, Louis? You’re…are you okay?” Now Harry’s sitting up, drawing his legs to himself so that they’re not touching anymore and, faintly, Louis is aware that he’s fucking up. He’s ruining everything but he can’t stop. 

“You’ve got more over there, don’t you?” He asks, jerking his head towards the bookcase and his voice is wavering - it doesn’t feel like embarrassment, though he’s sure that’s going to come later, it feels like betrayal. Like being suckerpunched in the dark. Louis...was not expecting this. 

“I, yeah, I like them.” Harry goes to take the book from him but Louis moves it away. He can’t let Harry look at it, touch it,  _ fuck, _ he can't believe Harry  _ read _ it. “I just, I know they’re rubbish but I like them.”

Okay, now Louis actually feels suckerpunched. It shouldn’t hurt because Louis  _ knows _ they’re rubbish but Hunter is...he likes Hunter. Writing Hunter has made the last couple of years bearable. Hunter gets steady three and four-stars reviews on Goodreads and makes people happy and Louis has spent hours upon hours sitting close to Harry writing about him. Harry is the whole reason Hunter even exists, and there he is, calling him  _ rubbish _ . 

Only Louis is allowed to do that. 

“If they’re so rubbish why is this one barely holding together?” he snaps, holding the book up. Harry is blushing nearly purple now, hugging his knees to his chest. He’s not attempting to get the book back, but he’s looking at Louis like he doesn’t even know him and…Louis is scaring him. Fuck, Louis is scaring him and embarrassing him. “I’m sorry,” he says, backing up. “I’m sorry, sorry, Harry. I should- I should go.”

“Wait, don’t,” Harry begs, scrambling after him as Louis gets off the bed. “I can put then away if you don’t like them. I know some of them are, are like, offensive and-”

Louis laughs and puts the book on the desk, above the sketch of a fat, weird-looking bird. He can’t see his shoes anywhere. 

Harry makes a confused face at Louis’ bark of laughter. His lips are still swollen and his hair is still in disarray. Louis would still be touching him if he weren’t such a fucking loser. 

“That one’s quite good, actually,” Harry offers, gesturing to the abandoned book. “It’s like a crime novel, like the ones you write, Lou. Only there’s probably a lot more explicit sex than you’d-”

Harry stops because Louis is laughing too hard now, amused on top of his panic, relieved that Harry, no matter what went through Louis’ head for a second there, has no idea who he’s talking to.  

“I know it’s embarrassing,” Harry mumbles. “I can explain.”

“You don’t have to explain, Haz,” Louis tells him. He wants to touch him. Put a hand over his cheek or ruffle his hair or something reassuring like that, but he’s well aware that whatever chance he had of taking a step forward with Harry is blown. He’s already acted like a prick and creeped Harry out, he’s not going to make it worse. “It’s perfectly healthy and normal. Loads of people read them, yeah?”

Harry still looks unsure, a deep line forming between his eyebrows. Louis still can’t find his shoes. 

“You’re,” he begins, and then seems to think better of it because he starts over. “Don’t go, Lou. I’m sorry I… I made things awkward.”

Louis laughs again, faker and quieter, and then spots his trainers under a blanket on the floor. He grabs them and his jacket, weighed down by his keys and his phone, and goes to the door.

“Louis,” Harry calls and then says, louder and very clearly, “I don’t understand what just happened, I- Please, stay.”

Louis looks at him, with his too-short shorts and his long, bare feet. He looks like the usual Harry as well as a whole new person - a Harry Louis has never seen before. There’s a worried look in his eyes, arms crossed over his chest, mouth pulled down before it curls into a wry little smile as Harry says, tilting his head to the side, “It’s my birthday?”

Louis tries to smile back. He owes Harry something, at least. An explanation of sorts. 

“I’ve got work, H,” he says and then nods towards the book lying on the desk. Fuck, how many of them has Harry read? “Got more rubbish to write.” Harry’s face furrows. Louis winces. “Sorry.”

He looks away before he can see the expression on Harry’s face clear in understanding (or shock, or disgust, or hilarity) and then leaves. He feels like an arsehole as soon as he does.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are! Thanks again, E, for being amazing, and thank you guys for all your support :)

It took a few weeks after they first met for Harry to be comfortable showing Louis his art. He was a student, only in his second year then, and insecure about his work the way someone who’d had his passion broken down into little techniques and theory to learn could be. Back then, the memory of Liam sending Louis a first draft covered in red marks was still fresh in Louis’ mind. He’d been so embarrassed he hadn’t been able to look the corrections over for a week, and he only did when Liam called to pester him about it. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Louis hadn’t been a proper writer when he started getting paid for it. He learned as he went, read as much as he could and listened to Liam’s lectures about paragraph structure and word repetition until the lessons stuck. It made him feel inadequate, like a fake. He was pretending to be a grownup, pretending that, just because some of his online stories for the publisher’s website had gotten a respectable amount of hits, people would be willing to actually buy a book he’d written. It made him feel like a tosser for ever thinking he could write something worth publishing without anyone’s help. It made sense he ended up writing what he did - people had very low expectations for their porn.

He knew Harry had sort of fallen into drawing, too. He knew that he’d never thought he’d go to school for it until a cousin of a friend mentioned something about an amateurs course during Year 12 and why didn’t Harry sign up? He was always doodling on the margins of his school notebooks, wasn’t he?

“I wasn’t an artsy kid in school or anything,” he told Louis once, hunched over a sketchbook on the counter at Anne’s, a charcoal streak across his forehead “Like, the kid that draws everywhere all the time and volunteers to make posters and stuff.”

“What sort of kid were you?” Louis asked, fingers on the keyboard but attention on Harry. He was still working on the first Hunter novel, rewrites and corrections and all the stuff that did his head in, and every little quirk he learned about Harry was fuel for him, a little more background to consider for all these new characters he was pulling out of his arse.

“I was in a band,” Harry grinned.

“Yeah? I was in one, too,” Louis said. “We were terrible.”

Harry looked at him without lifting his head. He was keeping his curls away from his face with a blue hair clip shaped like a star. By then Louis knew he had a small collection of clips and ties he used under his little baker hat hidden somewhere under the counter. It reminded him of his sisters, except no one had ever looked cuter than Harry hiding little pigtails under caps.

“You were not,” Harry said, a little too seriously for him to be saying it only out of politeness.

“Oh, we were. I reckon we were alright on our own, but together…” Louis grimaced and Harry huffed out a small laugh.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said, and went back to his drawing. He had been working on it all day, his pencil softly scratching the same page over and over again, always angled just so so that Louis couldn’t see. Louis was dying to have a look, but he didn’t dare to ask quite yet.

“Why’d you break up?” Harry asked and Louis had to take a moment to remember what they had been talking about.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Probably something stupid, I’m not even sure if we ever broke up properly or like...stopped being a band without any of us realising.”

Harry hummed. He always looked very focused when he drew, glaring down at the paper as if cross with his drawing for not coming out like he wanted.

“What about you?”

“Mmh?”

“Why did you break up?”

“Who says we ever did?” Harry replied and smiled at Louis again, all dimples and white teeth. Louis wanted to ask more, but he’d only known Harry for a couple of weeks then, and Louis was still unsure of just how pushy he could be before he started being annoying. Everyone had a different limit and Louis didn’t want to test Harry’s.

“Well, let me know next time you perform. I’ll buy a t-shirt,” he said and Harry looked up and put his head in his hand, elbow on the counter. He was smirking.

“What it we’ve got a terrible name? Like... _Cat Vomit_. You’d still buy a shirt?”

Louis pretended to think about it.

“ _Cat Vomit_ ’s not so bad,” he mused. “I’d reconsider if it was something pretentious like _T_ _he Chosen Ones_ or _The Wanted_. Wanted by who? Chosen ones for what? I’d much rather a straightforward name.”

“You’d rather we called ourselves _Cat Vomit?”_

“I mean, yeah. Puts a clear picture in my head, that. And I bet the t-shirt design would be sick.”

It took a moment for Harry to get it, and when he did, he burst out laughing, bending over his sketchbook, pencil still gripped in his hand. He had a loud laugh, kind of silly, and he opened his mouth really wide before dissolving into quieter giggles and putting a hand on his face.

“That was awful,” he told Louis, but the fact that he loved it was clear in the way his eyes all but glittered with mirth.

Louis shrugged.

“I stand by what I said.”

Still laughing, Harry went back to his drawing and Louis resolved to go back to work as well - his mobile was burning a hole in his pocket, Liam’s unread texts waiting for him. A second later, he was distracted by the sound of Harry turning a page of his sketchbook over, and he wasted a good fifteen minutes staring at his screen and wondering if making a character an artist would be too obvious. Or too creepy.

Hours later, after some customers had come in and stolen Harry’s attention for a while, after the new baker had gone home and a friend of Harry’s called Niall had arrived to help close up, Harry turned the little _Closed :(_ sign over and called Louis behind the counter.

“Here,” he said, handing Louis his sketchbook. Louis took it wordlessly, trying not to let show how big this moment was for him. He was seeing Harry’s art for the first time, Harry was trusting him with it, something Louis probably would never be able to do. When he looked down, though, he couldn’t hold in a laugh.

It was a poster, _Cat Vomit_ written in big, gooey letters and a long, mean-looking cat winding around them, slipping inside the ‘O’ in Vomit and curling around the ‘T’ in Cat.

The script was dripping and lumpy and honestly something a twelve-year-old would draw, and Louis was at least grateful it wasn’t coloured in.

“You’d still wear the t-shirt?” Harry asked. Louis could see the detail he had put on the cat, its eyes paneled like diamonds and its fur standing on end, mouth open in a silent hiss. He could see Harry wringing his hands in his apron.

“I would, absolutely,” Louis said and looked up to meet Harry’s eyes. “This is brilliant.”

“It’s disgusting,” Harry said with a roll of his eyes and pink cheeks.

“But a very well-drawn disgusting,” Louis pointed out. “Show me more?”

Harry did, going through the sketchbook with pursed lips and only letting Louis look at certain pages. Every drawing was, to Louis, better than the last. He’d never been a good artist himself, his skills didn’t really expand beyond stickmen doing jumping jacks, smiley faces, and the occasional dick. Harry drew portraits, hands, tea cups and cakes, all shaded so nicely Louis felt he could reach into the paper and take one out. He drew little cartoon children and animals with notes scribbled around them like story ideas. He drew the shop loads of times - there were several sketches from his vantage point behind the counter, the windows framed by their cutesy curtains and Louis’ laptop on his usual table.

“These are all amazing, Haz,” Louis said. “You’re very talented.”

Harry’s little smile was pleased, his lips trapped between his teeth. His lips were always red and chewed, teeth marks all over them. Sometimes Louis had to stop himself from saying something about it, or worse, reaching out and plucking Harry’s poor lip free. Seeing it up close was especially distracting.

“Now you’ve _got_ to show me your stuff,” Harry said, taking his sketchbook back.

Louis shook his head with a strained laugh, going back around the counter to get his things. Niall was clattering around the back, tidying up, and soon Harry would start putting the chairs up to wash the floor. Louis didn’t want to be in the way.

“That wasn’t in the terms and conditions,” he said.

Harry scowled at him.

“Fair’s fair, Louis,” he said but Louis shook his head again. The only thought made him shudder. God, _never._

.

 

_Hunter slid the terrace door closed behind him. He was clean and half-hard already from getting himself clean, and the breeze blowing outside cooled the water still clinging to his hands. His mark was leaning against the railing, staring down at the 25-storey drop with the casual air of someone who was used to the sight. Hunter figured the man had his fair share of experience standing in great heights, given his line of work. He wondered if he’d ever gotten his cock sucked out here, though, of if this would be his first time._

_Hunter walked up to him and slid his arms around the mark’s waist. The faint scent of cigarette smoke hit his nose, and he realised the man was smoking, fag hanging from his lips. He had to keep himself from rolling his eyes too obviously - he hated the taste of cigarette on people’s tongues._

_“Didn’t know you smoked,” he mumbled against the side of the man’s neck. Even his skin tasted faintly like tobacco._

_“You don’t know anything about me at all, sweetheart,” the man said, his American drawl lazy and low. Hunter knew more about him than the bloke’s mother probably did, down to how much he had spent in sleek black clothes, scratch lottery tickets and male prostitutes in the last year. He hummed and nuzzled behind the man’s ear._

_“I know you like your boys ready for use,” he whispered and his earpiece rattled with Barrett’s sigh. Hunter grinned to himself._

_The mark’s skin erupted in goosebumps and Hunter traced his lips over it, feeling the tendons on his neck jump. He smelled like sweat under the smoke, and like faded cologne. There was a drop of teal paint on the shell of his ear._

_“You got yourself ready for me?” he asked, and reached around behind himself to grab a handful of Hunter’s arse. The cheap jeans he was wearing were thin with use and the fabric gave easily, so that Hunter felt the man’s fingers digging into his flesh almost like there was nothing between them. The groan that slip out of his lips was only half feigned._

_“We’ve sent the first team in,” Barrett said in his ear. “Expect some noise in ten, might want to get loud fast.”_

_Hunter pressed himself closer, letting the mark feel his cock against the back of his thigh._

_“Yeah, I did,” he said with a moan, counting the seconds in his head. “Want to see?”_

_“Show me, baby,” the mark said and turned in Hunter’s arms, Barrett scoffing ‘_ baby _’ through the earpiece as if he hadn’t heard people call Hunter all sorts of names over the years._

_‘Baby’ was harmless and it made the marks believe Hunter could be easily overpowered. ‘Baby’ was a favourite._

 

.

 

Louis can’t remember the walk back to his flat. He arrives eventually, his face so cold it’s gone numb. Fucking February. Fucking deceivingly sunny days. All of him feels numb, actually, and he’s quite sure the cold’s not to blame. It could be the anger (at himself, for losing his head), the guilt (of making Harry feel scared and embarrassed while he was the most vulnerable Louis had ever seen him), or the sinking, ugly, terrible feeling in his gut that he’s never going to be able to show his face at Anne’s again. And fuck, the _regret,_ because he didn’t need to confess to Harry that Louis had written the book he very clearly (and often) uses to wank. He didn’t need to make things worse by throwing Harry’s words in his face just to make him feel bad - he knows Harry never would’ve said the book was rubbish if he knew Louis wrote it, even if he thinks it is.

Louis has gotten tons of bad reviews over the years (in the form of angry comments left on Goodreads or the publisher’s website, where all his short stories are posted for paying subscribers). He’s gotten everything, from detailed, eloquent almost-essays about what he’s doing wrong to, once, a daunting and succinct ‘no.’ that gave him a bellyache.

Harry’s casual comment makes him feel a hundred times worse. It shouldn’t - Louis knows the sort of literature he writes is often labeled as ‘trash fiction’ even by the seediest sources - but he can’t help the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Harry’s face was mortified when Louis found the book. He probably thought Louis was trying to shame him for reading the very same text that Louis put months into making the perfect balance of readable and filthy. Louis writes the kind of thing people hide in public and are embarrassed when they’re found out.

His hands, even though red and halfway to frozen, are damp with sweat. He pulls off his jacket as soon as the door to his flat closes behind him and throws it on the sofa, jittery.

It’s Harry’s _birthday_.

Louis stands there, in the middle of his living room, in yesterday’s clothes, and doesn’t know what to do. He’s not even sure what time it is. His eyes hurt from sleeping with his contacts in, his mouth still tastes faintly of bacon, and he can still feel the ghost touch of Harry’s lips on his.

He goes into the bathroom and turns on the shower. It takes a few minutes for the water to get warm enough (stupid, bloody ancient pipes) and then he peels his clothes off and steps into the spray. In a story, would Harry have stopped him? Louis thinks about it, standing under the spray with his head bowed down. Catherine Darling gets mushy sometimes, with her short stories. Not with Lorenzo, who’s basically a sentient dildo, but with the other barely-used characters she saves for when she needs a little something to fill her monthly quota with the publisher. Those are the only proper love stories Louis ever writes - straight couples, fiesty women and bland, simple men who meet, fuck, and fall in love. Or sometimes, more often, meet, fall in love, and _then_ fuck, because what’s one of his stories without smut at the end to tie things up? Sometimes there’s a little conflict, a misunderstanding or another suitor or an international flight to catch. Normally one of them (always the girl) runs out and the other one is left alone to decide if they should follow or not.

They always do.

They follow, and they have their big speech and they kiss and then there’s a fade to black and then they’re naked and moaning and coming, all in the span of a few hundred words.

If he hadn’t left, he would be in Harry’s bed right now. Maybe they’d have gotten each other off, or maybe they’d have kissed until their jaws ached and then snuggled up in Harry’s blue and pink sheets and looked out the window to the rare blue sky, talking about how long it’d been since they last saw it. Maybe Louis would have told Harry about the chapter he had added to his story, with some background on the letter and the photo album, just like Harry had asked, and Harry would have shown Louis some of his drawings and-

Louis opens his eyes and stares blankly at his feet. He left his drawing at Harry’s. It’s the only drawing Harry’s ever made especially for him, which looked as if taken straight out of Louis’ brain, and now it’s lost. His vision blurs but Louis blinks until it clears. His head is pounding, his hangover starting to creep back, clawing at the back of his skull.

He eventually wanders out of the shower and back into the living room, a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair dripping down his back. His jacket has slipped off the sofa and is crumpled on the floor, buzzing. The possibility of Harry calling his mobile makes him blush down to his chest. He can never look Harry in the eye again. By now he must have told his flatmates all about Louis’ freakout, Niall must be shaking his head in disappointment, the rest must be telling Harry how they knew there was something weird about him, always hunched in his little corner, writing his dirty little stories.

_It’s not that weird, you drama queen,_ Louis reminds himself, and then goes into his room and crawls into bed, wishing he could go to sleep and wake up in Harry’s bed to start the day over again.

.

 

_Austin Williams is a young, gay author who has been part of the Anteros Publishing family for five years. He resides in Manchester and has written three novels for the Hunter Page series. His short stories are available in our monthly digital newsletter, which you can subscribe to by visiting our website._

 

.

On Sunday, Louis tells himself he feels better. He obviously overreacted. Of course, he ruined his friendship with Harry, but it’s obviously not as a big a deal as he made it out to be. He puts on some clothes, makes himself a perfectly okay cup of tea, and sits in front of his laptop to write.

It doesn’t go well. It doesn’t really go anywhere.

He sits and stares at the last sentence on the latest Hunter draft _(Hunter had once had sex on what he later realised was a patch of poison ivy, he could handle stitches without anesthesia, Barrett's dubious face be damned.)_ and writes nothing. Or rather, he rewrites the same five or six words over and over again until he clicks out of the file and goes to his Catherine Darling folder. Lorenzo is a no go, so he resolves to write one of the mushy ones, the ones that could very easily turn into one of the rom-coms he knows Harry likes (he’s definitely not thinking about Harry, though).

He starts and the only thing that keeps circling in his head as he types is _rubbish, rubbish, rubbish,_ which is really not that different from what’s usually on his mind when he works, but it was never Harry’s voice berating him before, which is just...brilliant.

He pushes his laptop away and thumps his forehead against the table a couple of times.

Did Harry really like the story Louis wrote for him? Barring the lack of sex, was the writing really all that different from the rubbish? Fuck, he’s so pathetic it’s embarrassing.

He sulks around his flat all day, getting a jolt every time he slips and considers going down to visit the shop and whoever is covering for Harry on his day off and remembers he can’t anymore. It’d be too awkward.

Eventually, he ends up sitting on the sofa, head against the backrest, depressingly resigned to wait until Liam comes barging in to physically force him to work. It’s Sunday, so Liam will probably not ask about work until at least Tuesday. It feels like a long time to spend moping by himself, but Louis is determined to do it.

Something tickles his foot.

He kicks out with a yelp and his phone goes sliding from under his jacket, across the floor until it stops, spinning in place, near the telly. He thought his mobile would be dead by now, but it’s buzzing against the hardwood, screen lit up.

Louis groans as he gets up, feeling sorry for himself, ratty old joggers getting caught under his heels and dragging down his arse a little. He holds them up with one hand and picks his phone up with the other.

He expects his mum, or maybe Liam to ask him how the party went, but he does not expect Harry, the blurry selfie he took with Louis’ phone when they exchanged numbers for the first time there on the screen, his tongue out and thumb up, flour on his clothes.

Louis’ stomach constrics painfully, and he considers not answering for all of two seconds before he caves, too weak to pass on the chance to hear Harry’s voice, as sad as that is. He takes the call and brings the phone up to his ear.

“Louis?” Harry asks before Louis can open his mouth.

“Yeah,” Louis says, voice cracking a bit with how dry his throat is all of a sudden. He coughs into his fist.

Harry sighs - it sounds relieved, and it may be wishful thinking, but it loosens something in Louis’ chest all the same.

“I’ve been calling you,” Harry tells him. “Are you okay?”

“I- yeah, I haven’t been checking my phone.”

There’s a moment of silence. The connection is patchy, as if Harry’s outside, and Louis doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what he wants Harry to say, isn’t even sure there’s anything either of them _can_ say to make this any less terrible.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t kissed - if Louis hadn’t gone mental while he was on top of Harry, feeling Harry hard underneath him, about to take their clothes off. He can still see Harry’s flushed face tipping up to his, open and trusting right before Louis’ fingers bumped against the book under his pillow. He can still remember how the pink on Harry’s cheeks went dark with nerves and embarrassment, how he withdrew and made himself small to get away from Louis, even while trying to understand what the hell Louis was talking about, trying to get him to stay.

“Can you let me in? Please?” Harry says and Louis whips his head towards the front door.

“Are you-”

“I’m downstairs,” he says. “And it’s really cold and I’m holding too many things.”

Louis says nothing. He takes a few steps towards the door and stops, nerves coiling in his belly.

“Um, I don’t- I, you want to come up?”

“Yeah, if that’s alright. I’ve got tea from the shop.” A strong gust of wind makes the line crackle loudly. “Jesus, please, I’m freezing, Lou.”

Louis startles at the nickname and then starts moving again, hurrying to find his shoes. His head is spinning a little, something still tugging at him to stay, say he’s not home, avoid looking at Harry’s face for a while longer. He still slips his feet into his trainers - stepping on the heels instead of putting them on properly - and shuffles to the door.

He’s got his phone pressed to his ear, he can hear cars honking and the wind making static. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to hang up, but Harry hasn’t, so Louis stays on the line.

After an excruciatingly slow lift ride, Louis reaches the ground floor and peers down the old marble corridor. He can see Harry outside, his back to the door. He’s wearing a woolen hat and a long coat, a bag of some sort slung across his shoulder. Louis falters.

Harry called him a proper adult yesterday, but Louis’ never felt smaller and more pathetic in his life, cowering like a child, scared of facing a Harry that might have lost all respect he had for Louis only a day ago.

Louis watches as Harry waits, listening to him breathe through the phone, and then sees him bring his shoulders up as wind rattles the glass on the door. Louis moves.

He walks down the corridor and put his key in the keyhole, no fancy magnetic piece of plastic like Niall used at Harry’s place, but an old bronze key he has to jiggle to make fit properly. The iron door whines and groans as Louis pulls it open, and Harry turns around at the sound. Louis feels his stomach drop.

Harry’s face is flushed from the cold, his nose bright red and peeling a little from his leftover vacation tan. He’s holding a big cardboard folder in his arms, two pink to-go cups in a carrier in his free hand and he doesn’t smile when he sees Louis as much as he grimaces, a poor imitation of his normal grin. Even his dimples look uncomfortable.

Louis withers a little more.

Both of them lower their phones from their ears at the same time, and Louis wants to say something, anything to make the situation at least a little bit better, but he’s clenching his jaw so hard he can’t even open his mouth to try. Harry shuffles in place before Louis wordlessly moves back to let him in.

“Hey,” Harry says once he’s inside and Louis’ closed the door with a clang.

“Hey,” Louis says back, somehow.

“M’sorry I didn’t come over sooner,” Harry goes on, making no sense. “I just got back this morning.”

Louis frowns at Harry’s chest - unable to meet his eye - before he remembers Harry mentioned driving over to the country to visit family for his birthday at some point during their night out. Louis clears his throat.

“I didn’t really expect you to come over at all.” He tries not to make it sound like a question but he fails. He sighs at himself before turning on his heel and heading back to the lift, hoping Harry follows.

“I- I can go if you want me to,” Harry says behind him but Louis waves him over over his shoulder.

“S’my turn to be embarrassed, I guess,” he mutters as he wrestles the lift doors back open. He hears Harry walking closer and feels their shoulders brush as they go into the lift.

“Why would you?” Harry asks and Louis’ cheeks burn. It’s nice of Harry to try to pretend this is not a big deal but Louis has every right to feel mortified. “I’m the only one who should be embarrassed.”

The lift groans as it starts its ascent, and Louis scowls at the floor, keeping his mouth shut.

Harry doesn’t elaborate, and they reach Louis’ floor in awkward silence. Louis shudders at the change in temperature - he only realises how cold he was outside when he steps back into his warm living room.

Harry stands just inside the door, hands full and face miserable, shuffling on his feet.

“Here,” Louis says and takes the cups from him. “You can put down your stuff wherever.” He carries the cups over to the coffee table as Harry moves around behind him. Louis still doesn’t know what he’s doing here, why would he bother to come all this way when he’s not working, why would he want to see Louis after everything.

Louis rubs his hands on his thighs, looking over at the kitchen and the open laptop on the table. He’s not sure what file he left open, but the usual panic at leaving his work unattended doesn’t come. At least that’s something.

“I’ve got scones,” Harry says, and Louis turns to him. He’s taken off his coat and hat, his shoes are by the door, and he’s holding the folder and the cloth bag in front of himself, knuckles white. “Wanna have tea with me?”

At a loss of words, Louis nods.

They sit on his sofa and munch on the scones Harry dug out of his bag, and they sip on their teas, still delicious even though they’ve gone a bit cold. Harry holds on to his folder even as they eat, and Louis keeps glancing down at it over the rim of his cup. It’s not the same one Harry gave him on Friday, the one holding his drawing. This one looks thicker, a little more beat up. Harry keeps it on his lap and drinks his tea with his eyes downcast, fingers restless.

Later, when they’ve finished their food to the very last drop and crumb, Louis leaves the debris on the coffee table and sits back with his arms crossed over his chest, waiting. Harry looks even more uncomfortable now, the tips of his ears red.

Louis is about to give in and ask what’s going on when Harry finally opens his mouth.

“I just,” he begins, “I just want to apologise for saying th- I mean, did you really… I wanted to ask if you’re, um, ‘cause I checked online and-”

He tapers off with a frustrated huff and Louis still has no idea what he’s trying to say.

“I don’t-”

“When you said what you did...I checked online and, and Austin Williams lives in Manchester and I can’t- I’ve read your books like a hundred times,” Harry blurts out and then goes pink and bursts out laughing, chin pressed to his chest. Louis stares at him.

“Um.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh,” Harry giggles. His shoulders shake and he hunches forward, his laughter getting louder. “God, this,” he laughs harder, “this isn’t f-funny.”

Louis takes pity on him.

“It’s a little bit funny,” he says, letting the corner of his mouth pull up into a small smile. Harry guffaws - there’s no other word for it - going really red, laughing so hard he goes silent with it. He’s shaking his head, though, and hiding his face in his hands.

“Sorry,” he mumbles between giggles. His eyes are wet. “M’not laughing ‘cause it’s funny.”

“No, I get it,” Louis says. “Sort of like laughing at a funeral, nervous reaction, been there.”

He’s not there now. He’s never felt less like laughing before. Harry shakes his head.

“No,” he says, and then audibly swallows and sighs, thumbing the tears from his eyes. “I just...can’t believe I botched everything up like this.”

“You didn’t botch anything up, Harry,” Louis tells him. “I’m the one who freaked out.”

“No, no, I was just, just so embarrassed, I didn’t think- Did you really-”

“What?”

Harry looks at him, curls over his eye, not a trace of laughter in his face.

“Did you really write them?”

Louis feels himself flush everywhere, his entire body heating up so fast his head swims for a second.

“I- I, yeah? Guess I did,” he says, trying to sound casual but there’s no way he pulls it off, he feels like he’s burning from the inside out, sweat on his palms, a sick feeling in his tummy.

Harry’s eyes go so wide Louis is half afraid they’re going to pop out of his head.

“Wow,” he says and what does that even mean? Louis wants to stand up and pace the room, nervous energy making him twitchy, but his knees are too shaky to hold him up right now. “Wow, Lou, you’ve written three of them.”

Somehow the comment rubs him the wrong way, and his hackles go up in a second.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Harry looks shocked.

“I just mean…you’ve written _three books_ , Lou. That’s amazing.”

Louis sighs, deflating. He’s being a prick again, and poor Harry doesn’t deserve it.

“You knew I wrote books, Harry,” he says.

“Yeah, but I didn’t _know_ know. It’s different when you can hold them, you know. Like with drawing, it’s different when you see your work up on someone’s wall. Three books is...just...amazing.”

Louis looks at Harry. He stares at him for a good ten seconds. Harry looks as earnest and open as always, even if he’s still blushing up to the roots of his hair. He’s leaning forward and gripping the edges of the folder on his lap, staring back at Louis with fucking stars in his eyes, as if he actually means everything he’s saying.

“You do realise I write porn, right?”

If possible, Harry goes even redder.

“Yes, I’m quite aware.”

“I wrote three books of gay porn, Harry,” he says, because no, Harry probably doesn’t understand. “I write bad hetero porn sometimes, too. A couple more books worth of it. Is that amazing?”

Harry scowls.

“Yes, I think it is,” he says. “Erotica’s a valid genre and-”

“Not you, too,” Louis groans. “ _Erotica_. That’s just a fancy name people use to pretend they’re reading some sort of higher literature. What I write is cheap smut, that’s it.”

“That’s not true,” Harry argues, sitting up. “And even if it were, so what? You’re still published _and_ popular.”

“First of all, I’m not popular, and second, what kind of standards are those, anyway? So anyone can, like, create absolute shit and be proud of it as long as it’s _popular_ shit? Piss off.”

Now Louis stands up, rounding the coffee table so he can put some distance between them. Harry stays where he is, looking at Louis with a frown on his face, his grip on his folder tightening.

“You called it rubbish yourself,” Louis says, and sees Harry wince.

“I didn't mean that, I was just nervous,” he says, shaking his head “Like, you-you were touching the book I _wank_ to, and you looked angry about it, I just...I don’t know what I thought. I panicked.”

Louis rubs his hands over his face, wishing Harry’s words were helping. They’re not, not one bit. Not even the confirmation that Harry wanks to his stories cheers him up.

“It’s not rubbish, Lou,” Harry says quietly. “I’m sorry I said that, I’ve read your books so many times, you don’t even-”

“What d’you even like about then?” Louis asks and wants to bite his tongue off as soon as he does. He’s not fishing for compliments here. “You don’t have to-”

“They’re hot,” Harry barrels on. His voice catches, embarrassed, but he doesn’t stop. “They’re so hot, better than anything I’ve read, better than watching it.”

Louis laughs, rolling his eyes.

“Read lots of porn, Haz?”

“You saw,” Harry says. “You saw them, with my books. My friends get them for me all the time.”

_“Why?”_

“Because they’re are pricks and like to embarrass me,” Harry says. “They saw me reading a Nicholas Sparks book once and started bringing me all these terrible romance novels from the eighties, you know the ones.”

Louis nods. He can picture the scene so clearly in his head - Harry’s friends teasing him and giving him bad books that Harry happily reads anyway.

“And then I started taking a class about erotic art and my friends said they’d help me get inspired and, um, started getting me the other kind of romance novels and they got weirder and weirder, like I got so many about people turning into bears and wolves and, and _deer_ , and one time I said something about them only being straight, you know, and so I got a pile of gay romance novels for Christmas. And I read all of them, and yours was there and it was the best of the lot. It was so funny, and it had real mystery and I was like, rooting for the characters and, yeah. So I found the others by the same author and they were all good. And, yeah, that’s it.”

Harry shrugs, a little out of breath, and slumps back against the sofa. Louis is still wrapping his head around half of the stuff Harry just spouted at him. There’s so much information to digest (why did Liam never mention _weredeer_?) and he doesn’t know where to start commenting.

“Erotic art class?” he asks weakly. The idea sounds like out of one of his stories - the perfect setup for some sort of misunderstanding and for some sexually-charged live modeling.

“S’just an art history class,” Harry says with the tone of someone who’s had to clarify the same thing too many times. Louis stares at him and Harry stares back, steady and waiting. Louis is still anxious but the tension that had been building in his chest has mostly faded, leaving him drained.

With a quiet groan, he drops himself in the small armchair no one ever uses and puts his hands in his hair.

“I didn’t want you to read them,” he admits, almost too quiet for Harry to hear. But the flat is so still and silent that of course the sound carries and Louis hears the sofa creak as Harry shifts.

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Louis shrugs and then he starts snickering, laughter bubbling up his throat and leaving his lips in puffs. This whole situation is ridiculous, more convoluted and implausible than one of his worst stories, and Jesus Christ-

_“Nicholas Sparks?”_ he asks, peering at Harry from between his fingers.

“What? What’s wrong with Nicholas Sparks?”

Louis cackles, grabbing at his knees.

“How d’you go from Nicholas Sparks to Austin Williams?”

Harry blushes again but he’s smiling, looking at Louis with something like hope in his eyes. Louis feels the same way - like maybe everything isn’t completely ruined after all.

“Sometimes you’re in the mood for lovey-dovey stories and a good cry,” Harry says, “and sometimes, um…”

“You’re in the mood for filth?”

“They’re quite naughty,” Harry agrees, mouth twisting. “But they’re not filthy. I’ve read much, much worse.”

“You have, haven’t you?”

“You saw them, Lou. When you were snooping.”

“Hey!” Louis protests, sitting up. “I had every right to snoop, you sneaky boy, you. You went through every inch of my flat last time.”

Harry doesn’t deny it, but he looks down, picking at one of the corners of his folder with fingernails that are still painted silver, Louis notes.

“How much, um, how much did you actually snoop?” he asks, looking at Louis through his eyelashes. Louis’ heart jumps a little.

“What? Got anything else hiding under your pillow?”

Harry goes red again. It feels like neither of them has stopped blushing for a second since Harry arrived, and Louis is starting to feel a little overheated. Harry shrugs but Louis sees the way he clutches harder at his folder.

“What’ve you got there?”

Harry’s eyes widen, caught, and Louis’ curiosity pikes.

“What is it?”

“Er, okay,” Harry sighs. “I brought these to show you, like, that there’s nothing to be embarrassed about...you know, but I’m a bit embarrassed anyway. I’ve never shown them to anyone.”

Louis sits up straighter, looking across the room at Harry, who keeps tapping his fingers against the elastics holding the folder shut.

“Drawings?” he asks and Harry nods, biting his lip. Understanding dawns on Louis, and he gives a small smile, fondness growing in his chest until he feels like he’s going to burst with it, like it has to be obvious on his face. “Dirty drawings?”

Harry looks like he wants to protest at the term, a small frown furrowing his lips, but he nods anyway, and he snaps the elastics open.

“During my, um, erotic art class, I started sketching lots of bodies, ‘cause we’d look at all these pictures, paintings and photos, and they were all so beautiful,” Harry explains as he opens his folder on his lap. Louis can’t see anything from across the room other than charcoal smudges. “And when my friends started getting me the books, I started sketching scenes from them, like, like storyboarding, as if I was picturing a film in my head.”

Harry takes a sheet of paper from the folder and holds it up for Louis to see. It’s a rough sketch, crude lines outlining what’s obviously a couple pressed together against a wall.

“But my favourite thing to draw were the details, and Aust- yours are the best with the details.”

With some hesitation, Harry holds another sheet up and Louis gapes at it, for a moment sure that he’s staring at a black and white photo. It’s a close-up of a hand, fingers digging into flesh, shaded in soft greys. Louis is so focused on the realistic-looking fingernails that it takes him a moment to realise he’s staring at an arse.

He can see one cheek and half of the other, a hand spreading them apart, the space left in the middle coloured in too dark to really see.

Louis clears his throat and looks up at a flushed Harry.

“It’s from your book,” Harry says softly, averting his eyes. “That scene in the balcony.”

“The terrace,” Louis corrects and glances down at the drawing again. The more he looks at it the more details he notices. It’s nothing like Harry’s usual drawings, the ones decorating his shop, or the ones he’s shown Louis over the years. There’s something bolder in the lines, softer in the shading. It hits Louis, all of a sudden, that he’s not just staring at an arse, he’s staring at _Hunter’s_ arse, Harry’s idea of it, based on Louis’ endless descriptions of it.

He remembers writing the terrace scene, that time after watching Harry carry all those sacks of flour into his shop. He remembers feeling a buzzing under his skin, restless energy, the need to touch the soft swell of Harry’s biceps and the sweaty dip of his spine. He remembers pouring all of it into the scene, so much so that he had to have a wank himself after finishing it, feeling horribly guilty afterwards.

Louis gets on his feet and walks across the room. He sidesteps the coffee table and sits next to a fidgety Harry. This close, he can see the thin hairs on the back of Hunter’s thigh, the faint sheen of lube there under his fingers.

It’s just like the drawing of the room for the story Louis wrote for Harry. It’s like Harry has access to Louis’ mind, like he can see everything Louis pictures in his head as clearly as Louis can.

He looks down at the folder.

“You’ve got more?”

Harry puts the drawing he’s holding away and picks up another one.

There are at least ten more sheets covered in sketches - curled fingers and hands, spread legs and curved spines. There are bums and cocks, both hard and dripping and soft and flushed. There’re mouths, a sheet of paper filled with drawings of lips and tongues and bristly chins. Louis goes over them in awe, eyes flicking from one sketch to the next, amazed at the details and the rawness and the sheer boldness of all of them. They’re like nothing Louis’ seen before, nothing like the photos he searches for sometimes, when he needs some visual aid.

For the first time since Louis fell down the rabbit hole of writing adult fiction he gets what people mean when they say _erotica_ . _This_ is erotic. The detailed lines of the tendons on a wrist, the careful folds of fabric clutched by a disembodied hand, the curve of a neck, beads of sweat peppering the skin. This, this is definitely art.

Louis takes another drawing and blanches, faintly hears Harry groan. It’s the boldest one yet, a face on profile, drawn from the nose down, mouth open and tongue out as it licks up the curved length of a circumcised cock.

Louis has to make an effort to pry his eyes away from it, and he looks up at Harry only to find him covering his face with his hand, back against the arm of the sofa.

Louis’ eyebrows are raised so high they’ve probably disappeared into his hair. He looks down at the drawing and is shocked all over again. There’re veins and hair and _Harry_ _drew it._ He drew every bit of it.

When he goes to take another one, Harry puts a hand over his and stops him. Louis looks up at him again.

“This is where it gets even more embarrassing,” Harry mutters. Louis looks at the paper he’s covering with his hand but it’s face down and he can’t make out what’s drawn on it.

He bites his lip into his mouth and sighs through his nose. They’ve come this far, he thinks he can give a little more of himself away.

“I write under another name, too,” he says. Harry shifts, grip tightening on Louis’ hand.

“Yeah? For the straight ones?” Louis nods. “What’s the name?”

“Catherine Darling.”

Harry lets out a small gasp.

_“Lorenzo?”_ he asks in a whisper and when Louis glances at him, he looks like he’s struggling not to laugh. “You write Lorenzo, too?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, and then, a little braver, “He’s my fault, I’m afraid. I’m his father.”

Harry laughs, taking Louis’ hand and bringing it up to hold against his chest. It’s such a sweet gesture, and Harry looks so lovely, that Louis almost forgets they’re sitting among a literal pile of porn. Almost.

“I love Lorenzo,” Harry says, dimples out. “I named my sister’s cat after him, ‘cause he’s so dumb.”

“I noticed that.”

“He used to be unbearable before they neutered him, too. Peeing everywhere and _screaming_ all the time.”

“Ah, yes, classic Lorenzo,” Louis says and Harry laughs again.

“He was called Peach Fuzz before, but I made my sister see the light.”

“Did you lend your sister your porn, Harry?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, smiling. “She liked it, too.”

“Um.”

“I mean, she thought it was funny, too. She didn’t tell me what she thought of the- God, stop me.”

Louis shakes his head but he gives Harry a break. “Can I keep looking then?” He wiggles his fingers in Harry’s hold and Harry lets him go.

“Just, just please don’t think I’m weird.”

Frowning, Louis picks up the drawing (it’s a torn sketchbook page) and comes face to face with himself.

Over the years, Louis has seen sketches of shop regulars, of Niall, of Harry’s classmates. He’s seen self-portraits, some realistic and some a little more experimental. He’s never seen himself on paper like this.

There are countless little studies covering the expanse of the paper. His eyes, his fringe, his mouth. There’s him hunching over his laptop, and there’s him smiling with his glasses sitting atop his head. His trainers and his cuffed jeans, his hands around one of Anne’s more dainty teacups. Some of his tattoos are stamped along the edges of bigger drawings, like distracted doodles on a school notebook. A memory flickers in Louis’ mind and he suddenly remembers the drawing of the fat bird he saw in Harry’s room. He glances down at his own arm, incredulous of his own obliviousness.

The pile ends, eventually, on a sketch of Louis’ face, head tilted down. His hair is longer, and his glasses are missing an arm. It’s an older drawing, it’s clear in the less confident lines, the slightly crooked features. Louis looks up at Harry with a raised eyebrow.

“When was this?”

Harry smiles a little, looking down at his drawing.

“Opening day,” he says. “I wanted to draw you from the moment you came into the shop and dripped rainwater all over my floor.”

“I didn’t,” Louis argues gently, ignoring the flutter in his belly. His previous embarrassment is all but forgotten, the enormity of what Harry’s shown him making everything else feel irrelevant. “You made me want to write, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Honestly, you’re the reason I still have a job. You think this is embarrassing, but Hunter was born the same day I met you. _Because_ I met you.”

His face burns at the admision, and a little bit of the fear from before rears its head. But Harry doesn’t look disgusted. He looks curious, and a little bit pleased, and Louis still can’t believe they’re both just as fucked up.

“We’re both a couple of creeps, aren’t we?” he asks and Harry pulls away slightly.

“I don’t think we are,” he says.

“We are, a little bit. We’ve been staring at each other all this time. I make note of all your quirks and you have the freckles on my face memorised.” Louis gestures at the drawings and Harry squirms, not denying it.

“They’re cute,” he says, as if that’s reason enough. And maybe it is. Louis thinks Harry’s dimples are cute and he gave them to Barrett, even if he’s the only person who knows it because Barrett never smiles.

“It doesn’t weird you out? What I’ve been writing all this time?” Louis asks, just in case. Just to hear it, loud and clear, at least once. Harry shakes his head.

“No, Lou. I think it’s cool,” he says. “And it’s not the only thing you write.”

For a second, Louis has no idea what Harry’s talking about. His mind goes straight to his novel, the first one, the flop, and he freezes. Harry reading Austin’s and Catherine Darling’s works is bad enough, but Harry reading L. W. Tomlinson’s novel would be too much. Too intimate, too scary, too soon.

“You write children books, too, remember?” Harry continues. Louis remembers the old, stapled-together sheets of paper he gave Harry on Friday, his terrible doodles decorating the pages. “And amazing birthday stories.”

“Right.”

“And you said you used to write other stuff, not for work.”

“I said that?” Louis asks, playing dumb, fiddling with the drawing still in his hands. Harry nods.

“I know you said you don’t like what you do now but _I_ do, and...and I’ll keep buying your books for as long as you write them. Both Hunter and Lorenzo and whatever else you put out.”

“Harry, you don’t have to,” Louis says, ignoring the warm feeling spreading in his chest. “They’re shit, I’m sure there are better ones-”

“No, they’re my favourite,” Harry speaks over him, leaning forward and taking Louis’ hands in his again. “And I need to know what’s gonna happen between Hunter and Barrett because I _know_ there’s something there.”

“Oh, you _know_ , do you?” Louis lets himself smile, putting his insecurities aside for the moment and accepting the compliment.

“You saw how well-read I am, Lou. I’m an expert,” Harry tells him seriously and Louis snorts.

“Well, you may be onto something, Mister Expert.”

.

 

_Hunter couldn’t help but whimper as the van careened over the undergrowth and to the side of the dirt road. He was feverish, sweating through his clothes, and his side felt as if it was being stabbed all over again. He’d been sick, he realised, all over himself, but he couldn't find the strength to move anymore, much less to unstick his shirt from the stitches Barrett had given him however long ago._

_Speaking of, there was Barrett, leaning over the front seat, shaking Hunter so hard his teeth rattled and his side screamed in pain. Oh, wait. It was him screaming in pain._

_“You’re burning,” Barrett mutters, and Hunter wants to ask him if he had to touch him to notice. Couldn’t he feel the heat that radiated off him through the seats? “I knew those stitches were a bad call. Fuck.”_

_Hunter told him it was probably the knife, not the stitches, that had caused the infection or whatever the hell was happening to him. He also told him that he had vomited all over himself, just in case Barrett hadn’t noticed. Then he realised he was babbling and mumbling and Barrett was pushing his fringe off his damp forehead, looking at him with a worried twist in his mouth._

_“I’ll get you to the safehouse,” he said, turning back towards the wheel. “May’s bound to be there.”_

_Ah, Dr. May. She had all those lovely drugs that would make the pain go away and possibly keep him from dying. Sometimes Barrett had good ideas. Like that time a few seconds ago when he’d been touching Hunter’s forehead. That was nice._

_The van started again and Hunter’s head rolled to the side. He was getting his sick all over Barrett’s seats. Poor bastard._

 

.

They end up, like the last time Harry was in his flat, curled up on the sofa together. The telly’s off this time and instead they’re talking, fresh cups of tea in their hands. Harry’s drawings are back in their folder, and Harry’s got his bag in his lap. Louis can see books poking out of it. Austin’s books. His books. The sight doesn’t make him half as uncomfortable as it would have only a couple of hours ago. Harry keeps gushing about them, as if they’re wonderful - his eyes shining and his hands gesturing wildly - and Louis is entranced by it.

Watching Harry talk about something he likes is almost as beautiful as watching him dazed and lost in a kiss. His cheeks and lips go almost just as pink and all of him is glowing.

Louis can’t stop thinking about kissing him.

“Then there was the function! With all the evil, powerful people in that palace. I wasn’t sure they’d get out of that one, I had to stop reading and draw, like, butterflies and teddy bears for a while.”

“You really read them for the plot, huh?” Louis asks, jostling Harry’s shoulder with his own. They’ve migrated to one side of the sofa, both sharing the same cushion and leaning against each other. Their bodies are facing forward, still a little hesitant.

“I read them for the plot the first time,” Harry says, “and come back for, um, the racy bits.”

“And then,” Louis says, nodding, “you draw the bits.” Harry laughs, head thrown back. Louis rolls his eyes, biting down his own smile.

“I do,” Harry giggles.

“You should submit some of that art to my publisher,” Louis tells him. “Might make a cover or something.”

“You think?” Harry asks, he’s still grinning, his tone teasing. He looks at Louis, his head tilted a little to the side. “Do people do that?”

“Would you want to? I can try to put in a good word for you. I’m never over there, I only talk to Liam, really, but he knows people, I think.”

“Your editor?”

“Yeah, looks like a puppy but spends all day correcting the spelling of ‘come’ and giving suggestions about sex positions for fictional characters.”

Harry laughs again, falling a little more heavily against Louis’ side.

“Doesn’t sound like too bad a job,” he says.

“What about drawing for children books?” Louis asks. Harry is resting his head on his shoulder now and his curls are tickling Louis’ jaw and begging him to rest his cheek on them. Louis resists.

“What about it?”

“Would it be okay to draw po- um, erotic...things if you’re trying to break into the complete opposite, like, world?” Universe, more like. Dimension. Both couldn’t be more far apart from each other.

Harry’s quiet for a moment, considering. He’s so warm and heavy against Louis that Louis wants to surrender under the warm weight of his body and lie down, Harry on top of him, pressed along him. He wants to tuck his nose in Harry’s neck and breathe him in for a while.

“I could get a pseudonym,” Harry says. “Like you.”

“Yeah? What would it be? Your name already sounds made up.”

“Heey.” Harry jostles him again and Louis sways with it. “No, something like...Milo...Cocksure.”

Louis nearly spits his tea as he splutters, half-choking and half-laughing. He can feel Harry’s pleased grin against his shoulder.

“Or Stefan Tightbum.”

Louis covers his mouth as he laughs, Harry shaking with laughter against him. This is the first time Louis’ spoken to anyone besides Liam who knows about what he does. The few times he imagined a conversation about it, he never thought he would be laughing like this. He never thought he would feel so light.

Harry peers up at him.

“Dick Knobby?”

Louis snorts with laughter.

“That last one was truly terrible,” he says and puts his cup on the little table on the side of the couch. He does the same with Harry’s when he holds it up for him. “At least go with Richard and let people figure it out on their own.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll consider it,” Harry says, as if they’re being serious right now. As if Harry is really going to go to Louis’ publisher, claim his name is Richard Knobby and dump a stack of drawings of cocks on someone’s desk.

Then again, the day’s been strange enough already. Maybe Louis shouldn’t assume anything when it comes to Harry.

They lapse into silence for a while and Louis listens to Harry breathing, every point of contact between them lit up and tingling. He feels settled, like he could melt right into the cushions. Harry keeps dragging his knuckles against the outside of his thigh and Louis is staring like he’s hypnotized.

“Lou?”

“Yeah?”

“Are...are we gonna pretend we didn’t….” Louis’ chest seizes, his leg jerking and knocking into Harry’s. Without lifting his head from Louis’ shoulder, Harry puts his hand on Louis’ knee and squeezes softly.

“D’you want to pretend we didn’t?” Louis asks. Is it too weird, after all?

“No,” Harry mumbles.

“Oh,” Louis mumbles back. “Me neither.”

“Good.” Harry slides his hand up Louis’ thigh and Louis’ heart jumps to his throat. But before Louis can begin to consider whether to stop him or spread his legs to give him more room, Harry finds Louis’ hand and takes it, bringing it to his chest like he did earlier, fingers intertwined.

Louis’ heart beats even faster.

“Lou?”

“Yeah,” Louis rasps.

“Why’d you start writing?”

Maybe it’s because he’s tired, or because the room has gotten dark around them and it feels like they’re the only two people left on the planet. Maybe it’s the scent of Harry’s hair (sweet like the rest of him) that’s making him feel sleepy and drunk. Or maybe it’s the fact that he can feel Harry’s heart pounding double-time against his hand. Whatever it is, Louis doesn’t have the energy to get nervous about the question, so he finally allows himself to rest his cheek on top of Harry’s head and answers.

He tells Harry about writing bad lyrics and poems and little stories. He tells him how he wrote a really long story once that he loved and how he gave it away for practically nothing, only for it to fade into mist. He tells him about meeting Liam and him offering Louis a job and about writing the first dirty story, how he couldn’t do it sober or take it seriously until he got that first paycheck, got that first positive comment.

He tells him about going into Anne’s that first day just because he didn’t want to walk to Starbucks in the rain. How he had been stuck before but the words poured out of him after meeting Harry. How talking to him even for a minute fuels him for hours, how Harry’s shop is his safe haven, how much he’s dreading Harry graduating and quitting, how he’s going to miss Harry’s being the first face he sees and the first voice he hears every morning and then he stops talking because Harry’s kissing him.

Louis barely even startles. He falls into the kiss as if it’s part of the conversation, exactly where it was heading the whole time. It’s soft and careful and Harry doesn’t sit up for it, just tilts his face up and opens his mouth under Louis’, still holding his hand. After a second, he pulls away and cuddles up close again.

“Go on,” he says, but Louis’ forgotten what he was talking about. He nuzzles Harry’s hair until Harry turns back to him and then Louis kisses him again. Harry lets him, kisses back, pushing into it, shifting until his knee is on the sofa and they can face each other properly. He pulls away. “Go on,” Harry says again. “You were saying how wonderful and amazing I am.”

“Was I?” Louis asks, licking his lips and staring at Harry’s, wet and parted. “You are. Wonderful and amazing.”

He leans in and Harry leans back.

“You were saying how I _inspire_ you,” he says, smirking, looking so fucking smug. Louis wants to kiss him until he looks like he did on Saturday, begging Louis to get on top of him.

“You do,” he says, crowding in close and breathing against Harry’s neck, placing a kiss there and feeling Harry tremble. “You’re like that song you listen to sometimes. The Stevie Nicks one.”

Harry lets out a little whimper and pulls Louis’ face up to kiss, crashing their lips together until they’re panting.

“No one’s called me a Stevie song before,” he whispers into Louis’ mouth.

“You are. You’re...you’re that line. To talk to you...how does it go?”

Harry kisses him, hard, before dragging his mouth along Louis’ cheek to speak into Louis’ ear.

_“Sometimes to talk to you is all I need,”_ he sings quietly, making Louis shiver, _“to make me feel at home again.”_

Louis’ belly swoops and he buries his hot face in Harry’s neck, managing to push him back the rest of the way so that they’re lying on the sofa, their tangled legs hanging off the side.

“That’s you,” he says, pressing the words against Harry’s pulse.

“That’s you, too,” Harry mumbles back, hugging Louis close, taking all his weight. “I like seeing you everyday, too. Bring you tea and draw you when you’re not paying attention. Like a creep.”

“You’re not a creep,” Louis argues, frowning.

“You said we both were.”

“Don’t like it when you say it.”

Harry laughs and the vibrations of it travel down Louis’ chest to his toes. He kisses Harry’s chin and his cheek, right where his deepest dimple is, and when Harry arches up, Louis grinds down, dragging their hips together as best he can.

“I wanna cook you dinner,” Harry says, trying to fit his legs up on the sofa without letting go of Louis. They nearly roll to the floor, kissing and clinging to each other and the backrest to keep themselves on the cushions. “Wanna ask you about your stories.”

“Yeah, okay,” Louis mumbles, kissing up Harry’s jaw, hands on Harry’s chest.

“Wanna get you off,” Harry says, his fingers sliding under Louis’ worn waistband. His joggers slip down a bit and Harry takes the chance to stick both hands inside, leaving only Louis’ pants between his palms and Louis’ bare bum. “Wanted to get you off yesterday.”

“Fuck, me too. I want-” He stutters to a halt when Harry’s hands move lower, his fingers curling between Louis’ thighs and bumping against his balls. His cock twitches and he groans, bringing a knee up so that he can grind down like he wants. He presses against Harry’s crotch and gasps into Harry’s mouth, feeling Harry squeezing his arse and pushing him down harder. “Fuck, I wanted, too. To get you off. You looked-”

Louis’ got his eyes closed, and he opens them to look at Harry’s face.

Harry’s flushed and already staring up at Louis, his eyes dark. Louis kisses him with his eyes open and starts pulling at his top. They didn’t get to really see each other yesterday or to feel skin against skin, other than Harry’s hands up Louis’ shirt.

Harry lifts his arms and Louis pulls his sweatshirt off for him, leaving him bare from the waist up, his curls everywhere. Louis drinks in the sight (the still tanned skin, the tattoos, the pebbled nipples, the sparse hair on his chest) before grabbing the hem of his own shirt and pulling it up and off too, tossing it on the floor.

Harry stares up at him, his hands moving on Louis’ sides, over his chest, down his belly. Louis is kneeling over him on the cramped little sofa, panting, hard in his ratty joggers. Harry looks like a painting even in the dim light. Coffee coloured hair, rose cheeks and strawberry lips. Seafoam eyes. Louis never had any problem remembering the colours Harry taught him when he could easily see them painted all over him.

“What about your trousers?” Harry asks, and Louis laughs and looks down at his lap. He can feel Harry hard underneath him, just like he could yesterday, before he ruined it.

“What about them?”

“You gonna take them off?”

“You want me to take them off?”

Harry bites his lips and then he’s tracing the line of Louis’ prick through his joggers with the tip of his finger, making Louis nearly buckle off the sofa and to the floor.

“I can still get you off with them on,” Harry says. “But I want to see you.”

“Christ, alright,” Louis mutters to himself, lightheaded, and climbs off of Harry with unsteady legs, blood rushing in his ears.

Was it just this morning that he thought he wouldn’t be able to bear looking Harry in the eye again? And now here he is, pushing his joggers down in one swoop and stepping out of them, cock springing up between his legs and tenting his boxers, Harry staring with such intensity Louis almost wants to cover himself.

He doesn’t, because then Harry is unbuttoning his own trousers and kicking them off his long legs. His pants are white and tight and straining, the shape of his cock visible through the cotton, the elastic pushing away from his skin.

Louis stares, fingers twitching and mouth filling with saliva.

“Should we,” Harry starts, fingers picking at the flimsy fabric still keeping him covered. Louis wants to put his mouth there. “Like, on the couch?”

Louis doesn’t care about the sofa as long as he can get his hands on Harry as fast as possible, three years of pent-up tension finally stretching so tight he feels he’s about to snap. But it’s a small sofa, and his bed is just a few steps away.

He grabs Harry’s hands and pulls him to his feet, both of them slipping on Louis’ clothes and holding on to each other so as to not to fall on their arses. Then they’re kissing, without Louis aware of deciding to do it, wrapping their arms around each other, feeling each other’s skin everywhere, Harry’s pants soft against Louis’ bare cock peeking through the slit in his boxers.

“You’re so beautiful,” Harry tells him between kisses, and Louis doesn’t think anyone’s called _him_ beautiful before. Hot, pretty, gorgeous, maybe. But not beautiful, and certainly not as choked up as Harry sounds, as if he’s overwhelmed. By _Louis._

They nearly let themselves fall back onto the sofa, but Louis stops them and pulls Harry towards his room instead. He can feel Harry’s eyes on him as they walk, the heat of his gaze making the back of his neck and the small of his back feel warm.

He loves it.

His room is a mess - clothes, pillows and a few books strewn across the floor, his bed unmade. Louis pushes away whatever’s in his path with his feet and drags Harry over to the bed. He sits on the edge of the mattress and pulls Harry down to kiss him again, arms around his neck as he drags himself backwards so that Harry can climb on after him.

Harry does, clumsy as he tries to follow without detaching his lips from Louis’, hands grappling at Louis’ hips.

When Harry sits back, Louis blinks up at him, head spinning. Harry’s eyes rake up and down Louis’ body before settling back on his face.

“I really wanna draw you,” he says. “Is that weird? S’that okay?”

“Right now?” Louis asks, flattered and amused and turned on, all at the same time. Harry chews on his lips, glancing down Louis’ body again. He shakes his head.

“Later,” he decides, putting his hands on Louis’ thighs. “After.”

“After,” Louis agrees and arches into the kiss Harry presses just above his belly button.

.

‘After’ is two hours later. It’s after Louis comes down Harry’s throat, his hands pulling on Harry’s hair. It’s after Louis kisses the taste out of Harry’s mouth and slips his hand in Harry’s briefs to jerk him off, his skin velvety soft and sticky in his grip. It’s after Harry cuddles him and refuses to move until the room stops tilting this way and that, and after they clean themselves up and have dinner sitting at the kitchen table in fresh pants, Louis’ laptop moved to the counter.

It’s after more kisses and after answering Harry’s dumb questions about Lorenzo and promising to sign his Austin books (that are still in his bag, left forgotten somewhere on the living room floor). After the obligatory _Titanic_ joke and getting distracted for a while just from being back in bed together, Louis finally produces a pen and a little pile of printing paper from his office and gives them to Harry with a flourish.

“Go nuts.”

Louis dozes to the sound of Harry’s pen scratching paper, body curled up around his pillow and fingers curled around Harry’s ankle. He doesn’t know what time it is when he wakes up, but the lights are off and Harry’s asleep next to him, his curls dark against the white sheets.

Louis stares at him, drowsy, and then gets up and gets his laptop from the kitchen.

He writes until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore and his fingers keep cramping, Harry snoring softly next to him. The sun is starting to rise when he finally lays back down, and his eyes are closed less than a minute before Harry is sitting up with a mumbled curse, late for work.

.

 

_It took a month for Hunter to recuperate, hiding away in the safehouse with only Barrett and Dr. May for company. Their bedside manner was honestly quite lacking. Hunter started feeling restless as soon as he could sit up by himself._

_He tried to ignore how careful Barrett’s hands were while helping him stand, how his gaze softened when he thought Hunter wasn’t paying attention. He tried not to think about how Barrett had saved his life for the uptenth time, how he had literally held Hunter together, pinching the lips of his wound as he stitched him, stopping him bleeding out before they reached safety._

_Barrett’s methods for saving Hunter's life were usually restrained to barking exit directions in his ear, or reminding him that his mark knew some form of combat techniques Hunter had to look out for if things went south. Hunter had never seen blood on Barrett’s hands, and he didn’t care to ever see it again._

_The days were slow and lazy, and yet Barrett’s jaw was squared and tense all the time, even while he dozed on the second bed in Hunter’s room. He was in a constant state of alert, ready to jump up and draw his gun at the smallest disturbance._

_Hunter could think of at least ten things he could do to Barrett to get him to relax if he were healthy, and that was only using his mouth. He wondered if Barrett was even capable of loosening up long enough to fuck or if he was rough and precise during sex, too, counting strokes in his head and doing everything with clinical precision, as if following a manual._

_It made Hunter snicker to himself, and he found that picturing Barrett being taken slowly apart became his favourite time-passing activity._

_He woke up hard every morning and delighted in telling Barrett it was all for him when he caught him looking at the bulge in his lap with his usual scowl on his face._

_Barrett enjoyed asking him how had his prick not fallen off already. It made Hunter laugh until he thought his stitches would pop._

 

.

Liam thinks the draft for his latest (and last) Hunter novel is too vanilla but Louis doesn't care. For the first time in a long time, Hunter is not his priority when he writes. Besides, Harry likes the draft, and his opinion outweighs anyone else’s, especially when it comes paired with kisses and encouragement in the form of filthy promises whispered in Louis’ ear as he sits behind his laptop.

It’s a bit strange how watching Harry grate orange peels for muffins once inspired him to write a twenty-page edging scene but Harry telling him _“you get my hand for five hundred words, my mouth for two thousand, and we’ll see what else for three”_ turns Hunter and Barrett into a couple of saps.

Nevertheless, the draft is finished in record time, with a record low of on-screen nudity. As soon as it’s sent off to Liam Louis clicks into his LWT folder and goes to Harry’s story, which has tripled in size since the first night they spent together in Louis’ flat, when Louis couldn’t go to sleep until he put on paper all the words he was suddenly brimming with.

He writes in the shop, like he’s always done, and when it's not busy and Harry comes around the counter and peeks at Louis’ screen to see what he’s working on, the world doesn’t end and Louis doesn’t stop breathing, but merely swats Harry’s head out of the way and pretends he doesn’t notice the way Harry smiles every time he sees his characters on Louis’ laptop.

(“I’m sorry, _your_ characters?” Louis asks the first time he hears Harry say it.

“Yeah, you gave them to me. They’re my gift, aren’t they?”)

When he’s not at the shop, Harry’s in class. And when he’s not in class, he’s borrowing Louis’ unused office to work on all his final projects for uni. When Louis tells his mum the office is finally being put to use, she demands to see a picture of his art student boyfriend, and Louis is useless for the rest of the day, lightheaded and distracted, seeing the word “boyfriend” flashing before him every time he closes his eyes.

When he asks Harry if he thinks they’re boyfriends, Harry tells him he sure as hell hopes so, since half his stuff has migrated to Louis’ flat and that’s what he told his flatmates when they asked.

“That I’m staying at my writer boyfriend’s flat because he likes me better and doesn’t steal my food.”

“I mean, I steal some of your food.”

“S’not stealing if I make it _for_ you.”

Harry starts leaving little notes for him to find around the flat, doodles folded between his socks and in his toothbrush holder and propped in his keyboard. Louis saves them all inside his books, the more crude ones in Harry’s pink and purple paperbacks that now live in Louis’ bookcase. The same paperbacks eventually move to the night table on Harry’s side of the bed, because Harry likes to do dramatic readings of the worst ones. Except, when Louis is done cackling like a madman, Harry’s voice always eventually gets to him, even when he’s talking about _love buttons_ and _flesh plungers_.

“Jesus Christ, _stop!”_ Louis wheezes, rolling away and clutching at his stomach, half-hard despite the laughter and the terrible reading material.

“But Lou, doesn’t it give you such a clear, graphic image? It’s poetry!”

“At least read a good one, please, this is honestly terrifying.”

Which is how Harry ends up reading the terrace scene outloud to Louis, and how Louis ends up folding him in half like one of his doodles and thrusting into him while Harry holds the book up and tries to keep reading, his breath catching with every snap of Louis’ hips.

He even does the voices.

.

 

_It’s quiet and his bed is warm. It’s quiet and he can’t remember when he started thinking of it as his bed, his room, his window letting in the too bright sunshine. Is it even worth it to get up? Who knows what’s waiting for him downstairs after last night. His knuckles ache and he curls his body into a ball, pressing the back of his hand to his dry mouth._

_It’s too quiet._

_He gets up only long enough to put on a record, making sure the needle is clean of lint. It scratches some, but soon a guitar is strumming gently, and a piano is joining in._

_He climbs back under the covers and tries to pretend he’ll be able to go back to sleep._

 

.

The little bell above the door chimes when Louis walks into the shop. It’s late afternoon and he’s sweating from the walk from the tube station, the taste of cheap champagne still coating his tongue. Harry’s standing behind the counter, talking to the new girl. He grins and waves when he sees Louis, and Louis winks and heads to his regular table, the old little _Reserved :)_ sign now adorned with a couple of red hearts near the corners.

He sits and puts his books on his lap and, a moment later, Harry is standing in front of him.

“What can I get for you?” He’s not wearing his apron, and his hair is curled awkwardly from being held up by one of his little clips. Louis has been kissing him every day for over a year now and still can’t really believe he’s allowed to.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to ask me that if you don’t work here, love,” Louis tells him, resting his chin on his hand. Harry shrugs.

“You can if the shop’s named after your mum,” he says. “Tea and a scone? Raspberry jam okay?”

“Sure.” Louis reaches out to pluck the hem of Harry’s t-shirt between his fingers and pulls gently. “But sit with me, okay?”

“Of course, Lou, we’re celebrating.” He leans in to peck Louis’ lips and then goes back around the counter.

“Celebration’s not until tonight,” Louis calls. The shop’s empty save for a woman on her laptop near the door and the new girl sitting by the till, now reading a textbook. It’s the first day Harry’s not working and it already feels different. It’s still cozy, still one of his favourite places in the world, but Louis can’t imagine settling down to work here as he did for so long. He doesn’t think he could ever write anything that’s not Austin here, and he’s probably never writing Austin again. It feels almost nostalgic to sit in his usual chair, Harry humming to a Zeppelin song as he puts scones in a little wicker basket decorated with bows and butter and jam in tiny ceramic bowls.

Lately, Louis has taken to writing at home. His office is wherever he feels like it - the kitchen table, the sofa in the living room, his bed. Sometimes he even sits in the actual office-turned-art-studio when Harry’s away, where it smells like paint and vanilla. Harry is still the motor putting him in motion, and their flat is where his presence is strongest these days. Louis is holding the proof in his hands.

Harry comes back a moment later carrying a tray. He places a pot and two teacups on the table, the scones, jam and butter, and a little vase with a single blue flower in it.

“Sky blue,” Harry says, pointing the flower Louis’ way. “Almost as pretty as your eyes.”

“Alright, Lorenzo,” Louis laughs, used to Harry’s corny lines by now but getting butterflies in his tummy all the same. Harry makes a protesting noise.

“I’m so much more romantic than Lorenzo, how dare you.”

Harry still sometimes gives his dick names when they’re in the middle of an fight and he’s losing and wants to distract Louis. The first time he did it was after a conversation about euphemisms turned into a full-fledged argument. Harry got incensed speaking up for them - he could get extremely defensive of his romance novels - and Louis maintained that they were usually ridiculous and unnecessary. When Louis told him Liam’s story about the bloke who named his prick _Kyle_ , Harry barely even blinked, shrugging it off, but when he got into bed that night, still grumpy, he looked down at his lap and muttered, _“Guess it’s just you and me tonight, George,”_ Louis cracked up and let George do whatever he wanted, throwing his head back and cackling breathlessly everytime Harry muttered _you can do it, George,_ and, _get in there, Georgie, up and at ‘em._

He’s ridiculous - Louis discovers new reasons why every day - but yeah, he’s still definitely more romantic than poor, dumb Lorenzo.

The tea is as perfect as always and the scones are still warm. They sit across from each other and tangle their feet under the table, Harry jumping a little every time the bell over the door tinkles, as if he’s ready to get up and greet each customer before he remembers he doesn’t have to anymore. Some regulars still stop to say hello, though, promising to still come around even if Harry won’t be there. Harry smiles and blushes and Louis squeezes his foot between his. He knows it’s not easy for Harry to move on.

“How did it go?” Harry asks when they’re alone and the scones are nothing but crumbs on the table. “You didn’t text.”

“Well,” Louis says, affecting nonchalance, and takes one of the books hiding in his lap. Harry’s eyes go wide and he grins, looking back and forth between the brand new book and Louis.

“Really? Already?” He reaches for it but Louis pulls it away. “Hey.”

“It’s just a sample, but, yeah, this is what it’ll look like.”

It’s a hardback, light, but the pages thick and Harry’s gorgeous art on the cover jacket and on the title page. It’s a polished version of the drawing he gave Louis almost a year and a half ago, the room and the sunshine and the record player. The original is hanging a little crooked in their round living room, signed and framed, over the sofa.

“Show me,” Harry asks, holding his hands out with a pout. “It looks beautiful.”

It does. Louis spent the whole way here staring at it and wrapping his head around the fact that his words are printed inside it, held together by Harry’s art, his name there on the cover, _L. W. Tomlinson_. He already sent a photo of it to his mum.

“I wanted to give you something else first,” Louis says and Harry’s eyebrows go up, his hands down. He smiles a little curious smile.

“Alright.”

Louis takes a breath. A year ago, he would have been hyperventilating by now, but a year ago, he hadn’t spent entire nights reading his own porn to Harry, or listening to Harry read it to him. He hadn’t spent afternoons cursing at his laptop when the words wouldn’t come, only for Harry to come take him away for a while, for a walk or for a film of for a cuddle, so that later writing was like breathing, flowing freely and without a hitch. He hadn’t walked through a small mountain of balled-up paper to give Harry a back rub and share stories about how excruciatingly difficult creating things out of thin air can be. Be it fiction or art, erotic or otherwise. A year ago Louis took this particular book from under his bed and hid it at the very top of his bookcase and prayed Harry didn’t find it, no matter how much he kept asking for it, begging to be allowed to read it, and now Louis is picking it up from his lap and handing it over as if it’s nothing.

Everything is new these days. New publisher for Louis, new job for Harry, new official-as-of-the-last-lease-renewal flatmate for both of them. But the feeling of safety Louis gets baring the last little bit of his soul to Harry is old and dear and something he hopes he never starts to take for granted.

Harry takes the book almost reverently, his eyes even wider than before. He looks at Louis, making sure it’s really okay, and then presses it against his chest.

“Can I read it? Really?” he asks.

“It’s for you, you can do whatever you want with it.”

Harry still looks in awe and Louis has to lean over the table and kiss him, he doesn’t have a choice. Harry kisses him back sweetly, lips soft and plump, and Louis may be dipping his shirt into his tea but he doesn’t care.

“Thank you,” Harry says into Louis’ mouth. “It’s already my second favourite book.”

Louis laughs and sits back down.

“And what would the first be?”

Harry makes a knowing face and tilts his head towards the brand new book still in Louis’ hand. With a roll of his eyes, Louis sighs and hands it over, doing a horrible job of holding back his smile.

Harry blows a kiss at Louis as he takes it. He runs his fingers over the cover once, and cracks it open.

.

 

_For Harry, my Stevie Nicks song. This story wouldn’t exist without you. See you at home._


End file.
